Explaining more things to new players, How would you go about it? Options

[ElFenrir]

Well, with the new player threads scattered around, i figured id ask a few more things, that im a little wondering about.

I pretty much know how i'd describe the game in general, and how to build up a character. But describing the numbers, even with the book, i think could be more in depth.

Attribute-wise, the book uses the old attribute scale..but with attributes scaled down(ie, a 6 in SR3 is more like a 5 here, and so on), i think its a little off. So i tried to come up with my own scale here, for a description...dunno how accurate this sounds, but how is this:

Above 6: You're pretty much, in a few words, extremely awesome here. And not many are going to be at this point...especially if it's natural. (You'll find some augments in this area, though.)

6- This is still pretty much human pinnacle, even with the bar a bit lowered. To have a 6 means you invested a lot of time into this. an Olympic person could have a 6, but even a 5 could suffice here, with a high skill. If you put a natural 6 into something, try to give a little explanation how it got around here.

5: You are damned good in the area. Smart, fast, strong, tough, charasmatic, you're in the top bunch. There are others like you around; but it's not a massive percentage. This is a stat you've worked at quite a bit.

4: This is a solid stat...definately above the average joe, but it's not astronomical. I'd say many a competent shadowrunner has a few of these around; it's not impossible to get to, but you pay more attention to developing this than other things.

3: This, rather than total 'joe average' is, to me, the higher end of 'joe average'. This is a run of the mill computer tech's Logic, a dockworker's Strength, a street detective's Intuition(not a higher end classic gumshoe..Intuition would be pretty high there). Basically, its not really up there, but you do develop it a bit more.

2: This is the 'low end' of average, IMO. It's not horrible, but it's not great. You really don't bother much with the stat. However, there are plenty of people in the world, even shadowrunners a cut above the working stiff, that have some of these. You probably won't be relying on this much, though. A dockworker's Logic, secratary's Strength, etc. You probably won't be picked on for an utter weakling/dumbass, but don't count on it getting you many places, unless you have a hot skill rating backing it up.

1: Regardless of what some say, this score is indeed, weak. You have to basically not care at all about this stat. In fact, you might be compromised somehow here. a 1 Body is a real softie made of paper..or perhaps someone healing from serious injury. For example-even a tough ass football player might have a temporary body of 1 if he's in the Burn Unit of the hospital...the people so fragile they need to be in antibacterial quarantine. a Strength 1 means you are the proverbial 90 pound weakling who gets sand kicked in their face. 1 logic? Yeah, as my friend says, you're stipud. 1 Intuition? You bet against the Harlem Globetrotters. 1 Willpower? a 5 year old could intimidate you. a 1 is more of a dumpstat, and as a GM i ask someone to explain this a little, as well. I know there are so many points, but a 1 OR a 6 should be worked into the background.

Now, it's tricker with metas....an Ork who leaves a 1 in Body still has a 4. Is he deficient? For an ork he's soft, but he's still tougher than the average human. I'd say even an Ork can get a temporary lower Body if he's recovering from a hardcore illness. An Ork with a 3 strength is still as strong as an average human who actually takes care of themselves...but to an Ork he's sort of the little guy. I admit, when it comes to the metas i have a little more trouble explaining. I know many people who can dump a Meta's stat if they get the bonus, but that 1 there for a Human's body...they will blow away in a strong breeze.

I guess how i'd explain it, that Ork mage just doesn't have to pay attention to Body...he just...is tougher. Like a Dwarf with Willpower 2...his type are just a little more stubborn than the average human...making THEIR lowest around a low-end average human. Trolls are just tougher and stronger than humans....their 5 Body and Strength might be low for them, but it's damned high for a human.

I perhaps would look at stats as ''high end'' and ''low end'' rather than ''human''..since there are so many metatypes out there, each with their minimums and maximums. That 5 Strength Troll dockworker can still carry alot more than that 3 strength human, and the human has done this for a little while, and takes care of himself.

Now, onto Skills. Happily, these are well taken care of by the book. But there is one thing im a little unclear on, and wonder how you all describe it: the use of Specializations. Take runner A and runner B. A has a Pistols of 6, which is, well, the best of the rest, as it says. B, though, has a Pistols of 4 with a Specialization in Semi-Automatics(+2), which is 6 dice still. Both, say have an Agility of 5.

Both with SemiAutomatics roll a base 11 dice. B only rolls 9 with the rest though, while A rolls 11 with ALL pistols. But, when using semi-automatics...would you say theres a difference? Would you describe a difference, or would you say they are pretty much even? Would a guy with Unarmed Combat 5 look different when fighting someone with Unarmed Combat(Boxing) 3(+2), if B was using his specialization? I admit, this is where im a little unclear.


And the other thing with skills: while a 1 in an Attribute means you're weak, a 1 skill means you're actually ok. Not great, but a 1 in Pistols is better than most people down the street. a 1 in Data Search means you're better at datamining than the average guy outside. a 1 Pilot Ground Craft, as it describes, means you're a seasoned driver with low insurance premiums. You know what you're doing.

I do make it a point to explain even a low skill is good; you can at least complete most typical tasks with a level of competence. an Influence Group of 2 means you actually know how to get around a sight better than 'the guy on the street'.

Well, just wanted to do another ''new player intro thread', to see what other ideas you guys have. Some may disagree with my attribute ratings, but i admit this is where i stand there. I more or less think explaining what the numbers mean is a good idea.

[Konsaki]

Deleted due to my own stupidity of not comprehending the OP.

[ludomastro]

[ElFenrir]

yep. I pretty much am using the skill levels in the book...but i felt that the attributes could use some more explaining.

[Konsaki]

Bah, color me an idiot then. Sorry about the mistake.

Rereading the post, I agree with the assesement of the attribute levels.

[knasser]

Looks good. Descriptions are excellent. Only thing I question is whether miss secretary couldn't get away with a Strength of 1.

But very useful, anyway. I know you say you're having a problem with the metas, but your idea sounds fine. The only time I had a troll with minimum Body and Strength was a sixteen year old Physical Adept. Age can sometimes be a factor.

[Whipstitch]

General rant incoming, this is meant as a criticism of the descriptions in the book more than a criticism of the OP's ideas, which appear mostly to be a meditation on said descriptions to begin with.

In all honesty, nobody's ever going to convince me that the one size fits all attribute descriptions are a terribly good idea or that a 1 is as debilitating as many seem to imply it is. So many GMs seem to get their knickers in a twist at the idea of having around characters with 1 strength and 5 body, or 1 logic and 5 intuition. I understand the reasoning: people don't want a guy who can't lift a book much less read one in their games, especially if they also claim to eat nails for breakfast and can read the body language of an alien species 5 minutes after being introduced. Here's where me and just about everyone else I've encountered diverge on how to handle it: Many GMs simply require their players to jump through hoops to get their widely divergent attributes through while I throw out the attribute descriptions altogether (well, for the most part) and say play ball.

I approach it this way for several reasons. First, and most importantly, the descriptions don't do jack shit for my games. Really, they're worthless; to even make a guess at someone's level of competence you need to know the whole pool anyway, and even then there is many skills in which quality tools can trump raw skill and attributes anyway (Athletics vs. Synthacardium & Enhanced Articulation, Hacking vs. Logic anyone?) Really, if game balance, suspension of disbelief and munchkins are your major concerns, it's a lot better to talk to your players and let them know flat out that there's just some dicepool sizes out there that you just plain don't want to see (or really aren't as good as the player seems to think) coming out of those sheets, and unfortunately, you'll probably learn where these dicepool "breakpoints" are from experience rather than that silly list. Guide your players, stick to your guns and if you want that 6 unaugmented dicepool to actually be seen as "professional", then be charitable with building your challenges, because having only 8 dice w/ smartlink is really only good in strange alternate universes where armor jacketed Troll go gangers hopped up on Kamikaze or Nitro don't exist.

Second, I throw out these descriptions because, frankly, I don't consider Shadowrun to be an Intensive Care, Insane Asylum or Hospice simulator. A man stuck in a burn ward is living the hospital lifestyle and is in a great deal of pain as well as perhaps facing a negative dicepool modifier to disease resistance. His Body score, however, is the same as it was when he came in. If you don't want your Shadowrunners to be "crippled" or incongruent in various areas then don't interpret 1s as being so terribly weak. Really, if someone were to press a gun to my head and make me define attributes for some goofy reason, I'd stick with Knasser's idea and portray 1-3 as slightly different and hard to distinguish between variations upon average while everything above is somewhat exceptional. Ask someone to fish out Knasser's old "What would Samurai do?" image sometime; players who take stupidly low attributes in some areas are already at a huge disadvantage relative to what other characters in the universe can do anyway, browbeating them further about it just hits me as petty.

[jklst14]

I was actually thinking about puting together a similar ratings/description system for my players. I was thinking more along the lines of what they do for in the White Wolf WOD games.

For example,

Agility
1 - You can chew gum and walk. Barely.
2 - You can ride a bicycle, skateboard or rollerblade without falling.
3 - You can juggle well. You usually beat your friends at darts.
4 - You can juggle bowling pins. You hit the bullseye regularly.
5 - You can walk a tightrope or ride a unicycle.
6 - You juggle knives blindfolded.
7 - You can ride a unicycle across a tightrope while blindfolded and juggling knives.

[Cardul]

OK, to me:

1: This is the lowest functional level. Key word: functional.Someone with Strength 1 can use a fire arm..but, they would not be doing any bruce leroy pumelling someone. Body of can take a weak hit, but would be easily winded, and is unlikely to ever shrug off a hit of any kind(No 'It's just a flesh wound!')

2: Lower end of average: As the OP said: a Secretaries Strength, a high school football player's logic.

3: The mythical average: most normal people have this rating for most of their attributes.

4: Above average: The body of your average low-end highschool footbal player.

5: Exceptional. A fighter pilots reaction, a marathonner's body, a heavy weight boxer's strength.

6: Nearly the best possible for an unaugmented human.

7: Best bossible human uncybered, un-genetically enhanced human(thanks to exceptional attribute)

8: Best possible for a human without cyber enhancement or bioware muscle enhancements(thanks to exceptional Attribute and genetic optimization)

With 6 through 8 beingextremely rare, hardly ever seen, and being really hard to imagine from a human perspective.

In general, I consider no build point put into a meta-humans higher then normal to be the 'weak member of that meta-type', and 2 points invested into an attribute to be the average member of the species.

Thus an elf who is 'Ugly and rude for an elf' would still be average for a human, and a troll would still have the body of a marathon running human.

[knasser]

[Cthulhudreams]

I mentally use the same sort of scale: 1 is significantly below average, 2 is close to average, 3 is a developed area etc.

To give examples, the 'stupid' people have logic one, joe on the street has logic 2, a mediocre accountant will have a 3 logic, while a good one would have a 4, a 5 is on the promotion fast track to partner and a 6 is a wunderkind and will become a star analyst at some corp or the other with the right coaching and players will be running extractions against him, and 7 will be a true great.

[Ryu]

What Knasser said. That interpretation did a lot for me when I first read it on DS.

The connection between attributes is just a positive correlation. I´ve seen bodybuilders without endurance (much), highly logical persons with total lack of intuition, endurance athletes skinny as hell... the only grief I give my players is that I expect them to play those attributes/skills. One of my players tried to style himself tactical leader of the team. Gimped charisma and no leadership said "NO!". On the same note, someone with strength 1 is not "average looking", and a natural strength 6 makes people remember you.

[ElFenrir]

The one other thing i wonder about does have to do with skills.

A point was made about looking sometimes at the whole pool...a 1 Agility, 6 Unarmed Combat person is going to look like they know what the hell they are doing, while the 1 Unarmed Combat, 6 Agility person is going to be flailing around, albiet lightning fast.

But the specialization thing im a bit stuck on. Though im beginning to figure something out. Now, to discuss skills for a moment(and Konsaki, i DID mention skills, but i was using the skill description of the book. So you weren't seeing things, don't worry. :D)

a 6 is Best of the Rest, and its an accurate description. A 4 is Veteran level, and still very good. Now, the 4(+2), is veteran...with the speciaization at 'best of the best' level...or is it?

I always pictured two people with these scores as functioning like this: the 6 Pistols guy would be equally awesome with all pistols(assuming same Agility scores, smartlinks, etc.). But the other guy would be matching him with those Semi Autos(+2), but fall a little behind(Pistols 4), but not by a WHOLE lot..couple of successes.

Im trying to figure how id describe the difference between the 6 and the 4(+2)...when the second player was using the specialization. To me, im getting it in my head that while the first guy would be showing his stuff with all the pistols...the second, when using his specialization, even though he throws the same dice as the other guy...might have some more 'tricks' up his sleeve. Having devoted their time to it...i for some reason picture them, even with an equal skil levell,having a little 'more to show' so to speak. Im not sure if it makes sense, but i was coming up with it.

Or a 6 Pistol and a 4(+2) Pistols(SemiAuto), would shoot Semi Autos exactly the same. I could be trying to find more to this than there is. :grinbig:

Hyvää uutta vuotta, happy new year, btw. :)

[Tarantula]

[Fortune]

[ElFenrir]

[Whipstitch]

Deja vu all over again.

I dislike "Martial Art" as an unarmed combat specialization because it's akin to letting people take "Warfare" as a specialization for automatics. They're not useful designations and if anything the terms used are ass backwards. Honestly, unless they do what they've done in previous editions and make a "Create-A-Style" system (which I dislike the idea of, since it breaks from the standard specialization rules), taking a specialization in the Martial Art of your choice doesn't do anything other than add some fluffiness or invite people to say "Two Fisted Monkey Style is a complete martial art so I should just get bonuses all the time". It's a lot easier to just break the specializations down by maneuver in this case. Let "martial arts" signify a bonus to vanilla, unmodified complex attack actions intended to deal damage and suddenly the whole thing falls into place; you get Parry for defense tests, Subdual for Subduing tests, and Martial arts for kicking/punching people right in the face. No fuss, no muss.

[Glyph]

Remember that there are skill ratings of 0 in Shadowrun 4, which is personally something I like. Someone with computer: 0 can still use a commlink, and someone with pilot ground vehicle: 0 can still drive around town.

To me, even a skill of 1 should have some significance. Computer: 1 means you can tweak the user settings on your commlink or set up your new refrigerator to ping your commlink when you're running low on beer. Pilot ground vehicle: 1 means you have some minimal experience not merely driving, but doing things like switchback turns or outrunning cops. Pistols: 1 means you may not have spent as much time on the range as the pros yet, but you know not only how to care for and use your weapon, but how to use it in an actual violent encounter. And a skill of 3, that's a professional rating - ratings higher than that are only higher degrees of that professionalism.

I agree with Whipstitch on the martial arts specialization, though - I think it should be replaced by "striking" or something similar.

[Fortune]

[Inu]

I also dislike 'Martial Arts' as a specialisation for unarmed, for much the same reason: it always applies. A while ago, I posted an alternative: make unarmed specialisations different. Allow them to be bought cheaper, and let people buy multiple ones. They can, of course, only have one bonus applying at a time; and when two people fight, their specialisations cancel. If a boxer meats a judoka, they both get +2. If two streetbrawlers meet in a back alley, however, their specialisations cancel; neither gets a bonus. If a streetbrawler who is ALSO a boxer meets another streetbrawler, the second party is in trouble; his streetbrawling specialisation is cancelled, while the other guy's boxing specialisation remains in play. The more widely-skilled character gets the +2, the other gets nothing.

This can get deeper, to. The boxer/streetbrawler meets another boxer in the ring. He has to stick to the rules -- he can't use his streetbrawling specialisation, so he gets no +2. Well... he could try to use it once or twice and hope the refs don't catch it!

This works best if people want to take a small number of specialisations. A 'master of all styles' gets expensive fast. It also means you do want to study some of the more common arts (karate, kung fu, boxing etc) simply to counter the moves of people who only know that common art. Use your own discretion about whether non-martial-art 'styles' like streetbrawling qualify for getting a specialisation of their own, or if that's what you do if you don't HAVE a specialisation. I like allowing it, myself -- separating someone who simply has no definable style from someone who's learned how to fight DIRTY.

[Ryu]

I thought we did this before, but what the hell.

Explanation to new players: You may take any specialisations in the book. Some are just too good to ignore because you will nearly always get those 2 dice. You should delay buying specialisations until you know your style of play with this char.


Seriously, Unarmed Combat can be used for defense or for subdual combat, both valid specs. Yes, attacking (would have been a better name) is the most common use. As is (weapon of choice) for all other weapon skills. Or (combat injuries) for First aid.

[Cardul]

I always assume that "martial arts" is basing on a particular style. Every style has its holes. Muy Thai, for instance, uses knees and elbows for the majority of it, and has very little in the way of actual defense. judo, however, is all about locks, grapples, and throws. Human Weapon on History Channel is a great show, even if the martial arts people are going REALLY easy on the poor Americans. I could just imagine a Troll Savateur....I Kick you..through the WALL!

[Fortune]

[Ryu]

Hence the "...but what the hell"-part. ;)

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, we have done this before, hence my deja vu all over again statement.

Anyway, I truly despise the notion of splitting up unarmed combat into different styles on any mechanical level. I've yet to see a good reason for doing so, because at its heart Shadowrun is an abstract game and the funny thing about styles of unarmed combat is that they're already covered by a li'l skill called, oddly enough, unarmed combat.

Honestly, the styles should be left as a fluff concern; it's a level of granularity we don't need to play the game and using martial arts names as choices for specializations is needlessly messy and reductive at best and evolves into a massive point sink at worst. People keep tossing around the notion that "most people have an idea of what a style is like" and you know what? That's wrong. A lot of dumpshock gym rats, martial artist wannabes and children of the 80s will know anecdotal information about styles (it was after all, the Decade of the TV Ninja) but the overflowing ranks of McDojos filled with people who have no idea what they're talking about will attest that frankly, even most people who know the names of styles are talking out of their asses. The RAW doesn't assume that you know something about firearms as you choose specializations, (hell, SR firearms work best with a healthy dose of blissfull ignorance, actually) it just splits the guns up into various categories and then you pick your poison. By the same token Unarmed combat shouldn't be any different; you should choose your specializations by method only. The bullshido experts may cry foul the same as some of the gun nuts, but at the end of the day the game's a lot easier to play.

Hell, as it is now the RAW can handle anything if you consider "Martial Arts" to mean "Striking" and go with the maneuver specialization method. Let's say your character's an aspiring young boxer and he's pretty raw, but man, does he have a sweet left that just screams promise. He's got Unarmed 2 with the Striking Specialization. And his wily old training partner? Well, maybe he's old and out of condition now so his attributes took a hit, but he still knows his footwork and always manages to keep his gloves up, so he's got a 4 Unarmed Combat with the blocking/parry specialization. And maybe those two don't know anything about wrestling, but they're scrappy and know how to back down people by threatening a jab, and someone shoots in on them should do so at their own risk. This paradigm works for simulating just about any form of unarmed combat you can think of, really, and complete martial artists truly well versed in about any method of combat you can think of merely fall into the 4-7 skill range even before specializations. What methods these people trained by however, should be merely a fluff concern. As it stands now it sounds like most people who choose a style just end up picking striking, parry, or subdual anyway, they just call it whatever the hell style tickles their fancy at the moment.