Game level, Why must it be street? Options

[Cain]

No armor is perfect, though. That's what the -20 penalty represents: it's increasingly difficult to make the shot. Where the rules break down is that they apparently never considered the effects of Edge on these tests.

Since the Citymaster example seems to be causing its usual panty-twisting, I'll post the other one. The team's van is barreling up to the waterfront, only to discover their target's speedboat is already a klick out to sea, dodging its way at full speed through the Seattle waterfront traffic. The troll sam shouts: "Drek! I can't get a bead!" So, Mr. Lucky grabs the HMG from the troll, which he can barely lift, and takes a shot.

The conditions are bad: Extreme Range (-3), Partial light (-2), With Glare (-1) and Heavy rain (-4, this is Seattle, after all). Mr . Lucky is in a moving vehicle (-3) as is his target; the GM assigns an additional -3 to reflect the boat's speed and pitching. The target has total cover (-6), and since Mr. Lucky only has the vaugest idea what he's shooting at, he gets the -6 Blind fire penalty. To make, matters worse, MR. Lucky has two Serious wounds, for 9 boxes on both monitors (-6). He's never even picked up an HMG before (-1), but the thing is already set to full auto; so he goes for a narrow burst (-9, doubled to -18 because it's a heavy weapon and the gas-vent system is fouled due to an earlier critical fumble).

Mr. Lucky is at -53 to hit. He could try to aim, but since there's no point, he simply hauls the thing into the general direction and fires. He has a negative dice pool, so he spends a point of Edge, giving him 8 dice to roll. He could simply *buy* two successes with that; if he were to roll, he'd average 2.66 successes, rounded up to 3. Since his target is an average wageslave, he only has his Reaction of 3 to defend with, which will average one success-- not enough. And since Mr. Lucky called for a Narrow Burst, there's simply no way the target can soak.

On the one hand, this is a valid lucky shot. On the other hand, this is incredibly broken, an exploit running all the way down to the heart of the core mechanic. And let me also point out that this is actually a *more* difficult shot than the Citymaster example, so if you have a problem with that, you should really have issues with this one.

[JonathanC]

If you're going to ignore the role of GM common sense and say that long-shot applies to ANYTHING, no matter how ridiculous, you might as well just say that the team could jump their van off the pier onto the boat.

[Cain]

Except the jumping rules actually define how far you can jump. And while the Shot Heard Round the Barrens is an exploit, it's also perfectly fair and legal. The only reason to ban it is because the GM personally dislikes it, not because of any physical or mechanical improbability. And that is a very bad precedent to set.

[Jhaiisiin]

Where I think the disconnect lies is in the idea that you seem to think the rules must explicitly and definitively outline not only the rule, but also the logic and common sense aspects which should be *automatic.* I just don't think that a rule that doesn't take time to detail common sense and logic is broken or bad. It's the game designers having even moderate expectations of the people playing the game. I guess I'm just expecting too much from people though.

And yes, I'd have a problem with dudar tryin' to fire that HMG as well. Barely able to lift it, the shots would go wild when he fired, simple as that. Granted, the rules allow for it in that instance because they have LOS to the target, there's no armored glass or anything getting in the way, and thus he's able to take that one in a billion shot. As a GM, I'm not sure I'd allow it though. When you're that far in the hole, you just miss, generally. Unless it'll have some cinematic effect or somesuch, in which case I may allow it, just for the sake of the story.

EDIT: And you don't ban the rule, you ban certain situations, or at least apply fair logic and rationality to them.

[Cain]

The disconnect lies in the fact that the rules force players and GMs to fix situations that would otherwise never come up if common sense had been applied to the rules in the first place.

Since the Shot Heard Round the Barrens is perfectly legal and by-the-book, simply refusing it because you have a problem with it isn't applying common sense, it's essentially pulling a house rule out of your ass just because you don't like the way the game is going. Railroading, in other words. And the rules that force you to railroad players isn't any better.

[FrankTrollman]

Again and still, the long shot rules do not allow you to target enemies whose locations are not known to you. If you had the same example, only the enemy boat was still barely visible for merely stupendous penalties, then yes, Mr. Lucky could spend an edge and get a hit in. Probably.

But you keep pushing things from the essentially impossible stuff that Edge actually lets you do (which gets some people offended anyhow), to the actually impossible things that Edge does not allow you to do.

Edge does not allow you to target an opponent whose location you don't know. Period. That's the targeting step and Edge hasn't come into play. There is no dicepool penalty for shooting in the wrong direction, your shot simply does not hit.


-Frank

[knasser]

To echo what Frank has said, it would be like making a hardware test to bypass a maglock, when you don't know where the maglock is.

And going back to the Citymaster, could someone please point out to me where in 4th edition RAW it states that Citymaster's have windows, because I don't remember reading that they do.

-K.

[Jhaiisiin]

Oh wow. So now if it's not specifically stated that a vehicle has windows, then it doesn't have them? What about tires? Exhaust pipes? Engines? For that matter, how do you know it even has doors? Access points could simply be open doorways you walk in and out of. Do you see how silly this gets?

[FrankTrollman]

Except in this case the example was pulled up as ludicrous because the vehicle in question is an air enclosed armored personel carrier where the driver operates it through a wired rigger link in the middle of the vehicle. It's a "far out" example because there is no line to pilot. He has a wall of plastisteel in every single direction and he is essentially passed out in shock gel. It's not pilotted by a guy behind the wheel or something.

That's the problem with all the "OMFG EDGE IS BREAKS THE GAME!!!11!" posts. They take things which are pretty silly (shooting a gy with a full auto long burst with a heay machine gun when you lack the strength or the skill to properly use a heavy machine gun in the first place and the target is over a thousand meters away and partially obscured in poor weather confditions) that the rules allow by spending an Edge but then they try to kick the silly up to 11 by throwing in the little bit extra that the rules don't allow (the part where in addition you don't know where the target is and are thus not entitled to any kind of shot long or otherwise).

The silliness of longshots goes up to 10. That's plenty silly, and some people don't like it enough to not allow Long Shots or to restrict the times at which longshots can be used. The obsurdity does not go up to 11 and people who are making arguments against longshots do their position and their personal credibility no favors by claiming that it does.

-Frank

[knasser]

[Cain]

[Whipstitch]

Actually, I'd say the rules have an astonishing lack of an easily inserted qualifier. The rest is grasping at straws and histrionics.

I don't allow my players to fire a gun into the air and spend Edge in the hopes that the bullet will somehow speed up past terminal velocity on the way back down and kill the Oyabun so why should I let someone fire called shot at specific target when they're blindfiring in the general direction of a target that might not even be there? As Knasser pointed out, you can't even tell if a citymaster has a living, breathing pilot at all; for all you know they've got the Pilot program driving it with a Hacker/Rigger supervising and ready to jump in if the situation becomes critical. The whole situation is metagaming on a ridiculous number of levels and the devs realized this and made a special point to say that GMs should use discretion on this one.

[Jhaiisiin]

I don't think it's the rules that lack the logic and common sense. It's the players who try to bend the rules by *ignoring* logic and common sense that seems to be the issue.

And my bad for misunderstanding the meaning. I took "No windows" to mean gaping holes in the front side, whereas I now see that no windows meant Spirit of St. Louis kind of no windows. My apologies for my reaction on that.

[knasser]

[Apathy]

SR cannot and should not try to accurately model every aspect of real life to determine 100% realistic outcomes. I don't want to have to break out physics, engineering, and ballistics books every time I have to take a shot at an opponent.

What SR should do is suggest general, easy to learn rules that model real-life outcomes with reasonable believability a significant portion of the time, and build enough discretion into the system that a rational GM and sane, mature players can identify those situations where the general rule doesn't fit and modify as necessary. I believe SR4 does this fairly well. I also believe that SR4 strikes a better balance on the simplicity-vs-comprehensive accuracy scale than the previous versions did.

Can anyone suggest a game that they think does a better job of both modeling realistic outcomes and being fun/easy to play? If so, have you tried playing the SR setting using their rules instead? How did it work? And for the people who think the SR4 rules are so atrocious, why are you still playing it?

[Ravor]

Because I think Fourth Edition Rules work just fine for the most part, provided that one stays within the limitations of the engine and shies away from large Dicepools. :cyber:

*Edit*

AS for better systems out there, well personally I like GURPS ok with the exception of their suggested Magic Systems.

[Kyoto Kid]

...unfortunately the only systems that really tried to simulate realism that I have dealt with were either pretty much unplayable (C&S) or so cumbersome (Space Opera) they make SR combat look like that other game (the non d20 version). Keep in mind this was in the day when the 4k Trash-80 just barely came out (which cost more in the 1980s than the notebook am currently using). At that time we were still pretty much all using mainframes and Decwriters™ as terminals.

While GMing Space Opera For starship manoeuvring in relativistic space (sub FTL and thank the Great Mother they didn't allow for combat in hyperspace), I actually did use 3 dimensional coordinate plotting, vectors, and Newtonian physics. Made for some really whacked out ship to ship combats, but that was the way things really work in space.

Also played a game called Shooting Stars (I think it was Avalon Hill) which was a tactical combat game set in HE orbit where you also had to plot vectors and calculate thrust impulse just to make a simple turn.

[Riley37]

Are y'all having fun with this? Because if you're not, there's other threads too...

[Cain]

It's one thing for an abstract system to provide abstract results. And it's fine for a simulationist system to provide simulationist results. But for a simulationist system to provide abstract results? That's a lot of pain and agony for something so unclear. And before people start whinging about how SR4 isn't supposed to be simulationist, I'll point out that it is heavily on the crunchy side when compared to other games out there; and just because something is a badly done simulation doesn't mean it's not a simulation.

The whole point-- and one I see most people agreeing with-- is that the rules lack common sense. Instead of the rules providing it for you, which many systems do, it demands that you do it for the rules. The counterargument seems to amount to: "But it's not so bad!" That's not what I consider as a convincing argument. Basically, it is bad; people are just arguing degree.

When compared to other systems out there, these sort of loopholes really make SR4 look like it's poorly done. D20 has fewer loopholes (although D&D has more). When you look at it comparitively, the flaws in the system are huge and glaring.

[FrankTrollman]

[Apathy]

[mfb]

because the only things that can really piss a person off are things that the person has a strong attachment to in the first place. and when something pisses a person off like that, it takes a really, really, really long fucking time to get unpissed.

[toturi]

But it is also worth bearing in mind, most other people who are here have just as strong an attachment as well.

[mfb]

i didn't say they don't. i certainly won't claim that more attachment = happier with any particular aspect of SR, up to and including new editions of the game.

[knasser]