So, how is SR4 now? Options

[Veggiesama]

It's been a while since I played SR4 (before any books came out), and I've had a recent hankering to get back in the game.

1. How are the new books (Street Magic, Arsenal, etc.)? Worth picking up?
2. I had an absurd amount of house rules in my game, especially related to character creation, overwhelming hacking rules, combat oddities, etc. (just looking at my house rules page makes me cringe!) New books/errata do anything to address those "big issues," or have the problems been exacerbated?
3. Anyone play online? What VTs (virtual tabletops) do Shadowrun players use most?

[Degausser]

It's been a while since I played, and I've had a recent hankering to get back in the game. Last time I played was before any of the supplement books came out.

1. How are the new books (Street Magic, Arsenal, etc.)? Worth picking up?
2. I had an absurd amount of house rules in my game, especially related to character creation, overwhelming hacking rules, combat oddities, etc. (just looking at my house rules page makes me cringe!) New books/errata do anything to address those "big issues," or have the problems been exacerbated?
3. Anyone play online? What VTs (virtual tabletops) do Shadowrun players use most?

I played about a year ago with Street Magic and Runner's Havens, and it was fine. I know I am in the minority, but I liked 4th better than 3rd ed. My friends and I always joked when we played 3rd ed because the rules were so complex and hard to figure out that half the time we didn't know what we were doing. We had to focus more on the rules then on the scenery and story, which isn't right for any RPG. 4th ed has simplified it's rules a lot (Matrix and astral stuff still gives me a headache, but not the migranes that it did before.)

Street magic was good, and has a lot more traditions that you can ascribe to, like Shintoist, Bhuddist, and even a Judeo-Christian tradition. It has new spells to throw at enemies (or for the GM to throw at players) and, of course, the rules for initiation are expanded upon. Good stuff.

Runner havens is a book that essentially gives a lot of background about places to run. Hong Kong and Seattle are given very large sections of the book, and then there are a few smaller entries for other areas. It's a good book if you want to know what's happening in the SR universe, and it will help you get a really good 'feel' for how 2070 is in the Shadowrun world, but it isn't really necessary if your GM already has a grip on that stuff or likes to go 'Off reservation' and impart his own flair to Shadowrun.


On a side note, when I played, I don't think we had any major house rules and the game worked just fine. Although, we almost never did Matrix stuff. The GM assigned us an NPC hacker and just handwaved most of the matrix stuff. ("Okay, matrix dude goes into VR mode. You have no idea how long it will take him to retrieve the information. Just then 3 Dobermen drones bust in, roll for initiative," type stuff.)

[psychophipps]

While the books do add more information and some new ideas, I feel that the overall quality of the system writing has gone downhill as the game has progressed in the numbers of sourcebooks. You will note a pretty steady increase in munchkin fan service and general "WTF where they thinking?!?" wankery as new materials come out and the writing pool gets larger due to production needs.

The short fiction and a lot of the "how things work/the way of the world" bits before they get to the crunch, on the other hand, have really made some excellent steps forward and give players and GMs alike some great ideas on how to get a good "SR vibe" going in their games. I do have to give strong props for that.

[BookWyrm]

I would have to say that SR4, at first, left me skeptical (having fully embraced SR3 just before FASA shut it's doors; I've been reading ALL the SR books since 1st ed.), but it's grown on me. Granted, some rulings don't quite mesh, and some things have been lost in the 'upgrade' from SR3, but that's the point. The system has to evolve or be left behind.

[Glyph]

It's been a while since I played SR4 (before any books came out), and I've had a recent hankering to get back in the game.

1. How are the new books (Street Magic, Arsenal, etc.)? Worth picking up?

The new books are definitely worth picking up. They expand on the rules and options from the main book in a given area - Street Magic has new spells, adept powers, traditions, and threast; Arsenal has gear, guns, and advanced combat options such as martial arts. And so on. There has been a bit of power creep in the books, but not as bad as I was expecting.

2. I had an absurd amount of house rules in my game, especially related to character creation, overwhelming hacking rules, combat oddities, etc. (just looking at my house rules page makes me cringe!) New books/errata do anything to address those "big issues," or have the problems been exacerbated?

It depends on what you consider "problems". Some loopholes have been closed, and some rules have been clarified or expounded upon. However, there are also potentially game-disrupting things out there, such as empathy software (which most GMs seem to nerf).

3. Anyone play online? What VTs (virtual tabletops) do Shadowrun players use most?

I like the play-by-post in Welcome to the Shadows. Not everyone's cup of tea. Someone asked about the various online options in this thread, where De Badd Ass broke it down pretty well.

[Thadeus Bearpaw]

I really dig 4th ed. I hadn't played anything since 2nd, and read 3rd ed over the course of the last couple of months. I disagree with the previous poster, I think the quality of the books has increased with time. I think Feral Cities was better written than Runner Havens and had more relevant information. I loved Unwired, it really gave alot more technical depth to the Wireless matrix and helped me know both how to run it more efficiently, and how to come up with things quickly. Runner's Companion was a bit hit and miss with me, but the qualities section with a couple of glaring exceptions was very helpful. I think Feral Cities is far and away my favorite world book and that's most recently done. I like the game, I like the responsiveness of the developers and I'm satisified with my purchases of it.

[Warlordtheft]

I would strongly suggest the Runners companion for a new player and gm. It has a good bit on surviving in the shadows in the wireless matrix and SINs. Also it would help if you had problems with character gen as they have alternate methods including the old priority system.

Overall the books have been pretty good, as Adam posted a while back Catalyst wanted to get teh core books out first, and they have done so. Now they can get back into developing the background of the SR world a bit more. My only complaint is that the stuff is not polished. One or two mispelled words I can accept but an incorrect title for an entire chapter is a bit sloppy (it happened in my copy of unwired).

[GreyBrother]

1. Pretty Good. Whats worth picking up depends. RC and Unwired of course, Arsenal und Augmentation if you want PCs in those areas.2
2. We don't use much housrules, just one to limit the number of rolls you can do on an extended test.
3. We play with Skype and Pen and Paper. Works pretty good.

[BlueMax]

While the books do add more information and some new ideas, I feel that the overall quality of the system writing has gone downhill as the game has progressed in the numbers of sourcebooks. You will note a pretty steady increase in munchkin fan service and general "WTF where they thinking?!?" wankery as new materials come out and the writing pool gets larger due to production needs.

The short fiction and a lot of the "how things work/the way of the world" bits before they get to the crunch, on the other hand, have really made some excellent steps forward and give players and GMs alike some great ideas on how to get a good "SR vibe" going in their games. I do have to give strong props for that.

Take everything in the review above and apply the opposite stance. I am so happy with the expansions. Unwired filled in the missing info my brain needed for decking errr hacking.
As for the fiction, I could do without it. Its not horrible fiction, don't get me wrong. My time is limited and I need more meat and examples. Thankfully, Bad Moon Rising is on my plate now.

Now what I wouldn't give for more example critters. Today, not after or at Gencon.(IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Eugene]

I know I am in the minority, but I liked 4th better than 3rd ed.

Naw, you're not in the minority. It's just that the "I (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) 3e" crowd is noisier.

[raggedhalo]

I wouldn't want to run SR4 without Street Magic and Unwired, and maybe the Runner's Companion. Arsenal and Augmentation are great books, but not essential.

Everyone's taste for house rules varies. Each of the core books has numerous optional rules that you can use to tweak the game just-so. My group only uses six house rules:
1. Change Availability of Hacking programs to Rating*3, making maximum starting rating 4.
2. Everyone starts with Charisma+Intuition BPs worth of Contacts for free
3. While you're learning a new skill, you take no penalty for defaulting to it. That is, if you were learning Longarms, then while you're learning you would be able to roll Agility, rather than Agility-1, to hit
4. If you have a legitimate, non-criminal SIN, you can buy legal licenses for Restricted gear by paying 10% of the item's cost, or 100 nuyen (whichever is more).
5. Autosofts and simsense programs (e.g. skillsofts) aren't available as pirated programs but don't require SIN linkage
6. Reaction Enhancers stack with Wired Reflexes

Between the rules in their basic state, and the various optional rules and suggested tweaks, we really don't need any more. I'd recommend starting from a position of no house rules and seeing what you think needs fixing.

[Draco18s]

I wouldn't want to run SR4 without Street Magic and Unwired, and maybe the Runner's Companion. Arsenal and Augmentation are great books, but not essential.

Interesting. I'd have said Street Magic and Arsenal. Don't get me wrong, Unwired covers a whole slew of things that were only barely described before, but being the hacker is almost "playing a game within the game and not the game itself." At best you'll have one character per game that'll use it, whereas with Arsenal all of your gunbunnies will be drooling over it.

Just my 2 creds.

[Kagetenshi]

Naw, you're not in the minority. It's just that the "I (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) 3e" crowd is noisier.

You're on a board overwhelmingly filled with discussions of 4th edition, presumably populated by people who play it or have at least read the books. There isn't a whole lot here for someone who isn't a fan.

~J, who certainly only dropped in for nostalgia's sake

[BlueMax]

Interesting. I'd have said Street Magic and Arsenal. Don't get me wrong, Unwired covers a whole slew of things that were only barely described before, but being the hacker is almost "playing a game within the game and not the game itself." At best you'll have one character per game that'll use it, whereas with Arsenal all of your gunbunnies will be drooling over it.

Just my 2 creds.

What? How? Why? who? "game within a game?"
As much as I resisted AR, it brings everyone to the digital battlefield. The games hackers are now mostly script kiddies. Personal skill is only a small part, good gear and great programs everyone can use. Your teams script kiddy should arm everyone's commlink and then everyone can be involved. A fast Sammy can click his attack icon instead of doing a second burst.
Its a layer placed over the physical world, just like magic. Its actually easier to get everyone involved in a Matrix run than to get everyone involved in Astral. Far Far easier.

The color of the Decker ( we called them Technomancers in my day... ) interacting with code on the fly is sadly gone but the benefit of this change is that everyone can be involved.

[Draco18s]

Your group has figured it out. Ours hasn't. Even based on that description on how to do things I'm not likely to get people to change.

[BlueMax]

Your group has figured it out. Ours hasn't. Even based on that description on how to do things I'm not likely to get people to change.

It took us three years and the only way the transition happened then was when a brilliant new player joined us. His fresh new perspective, dedication and unsurpassed brilliance made the change possible. Thanks Genmo.

BlueMax
/credit
// where its due.

[Veggiesama]

Although, we almost never did Matrix stuff. The GM assigned us an NPC hacker and just handwaved most of the matrix stuff. ("Okay, matrix dude goes into VR mode. You have no idea how long it will take him to retrieve the information. Just then 3 Dobermen drones bust in, roll for initiative," type stuff.)

Is it still pretty common to ignore or hand-wave the Matrix still? Last I remember, there were these huge threads and documents dedicated to "fixing" the Matrix (Serbitar comes to mind--he still around?).

As much as I resisted AR, it brings everyone to the digital battlefield. The games hackers are now mostly script kiddies. Personal skill is only a small part, good gear and great programs everyone can use. Your teams script kiddy should arm everyone's commlink and then everyone can be involved. A fast Sammy can click his attack icon instead of doing a second burst.

That sounds awesome. I would love to try a high-tech game like that.

I would strongly suggest the Runners companion for a new player and gm. It has a good bit on surviving in the shadows in the wireless matrix and SINs. Also it would help if you had problems with character gen as they have alternate methods including the old priority system.

Runners Companion has a karma character creation system, right? How does that stack up compared to the house rule systems floating around? I used some variation of Serbitar's, I think.

Anyway, I love the SR fiction so I might pick up some of the mentioned books for that alone. Though I am curious about the crunch: someone mentioned power creep was setting in? Is there anything in particular to worry about? I'm getting sick of D&D 4e for that reason alone.

[Glyph]

Runners Companion has a karma character creation system, right? How does that stack up compared to the house rule systems floating around? I used some variation of Serbitar's, I think.

Karma creation is good, although the default amount of 750 Karma definitely creates more powerful characters than the default amount of 400 build points. It creates more "balanced" characters, but only in the sense of being able to max out your specialty and get some other stuff. The biggest controversy about it is that you don't pay racial costs, per se. This is balanced out by higher Attributes costing more, instead of being a flat rate.

To give an example - with build points, a character spends 40 points to buy "troll", then 40 points on Strength (which starts out at a base rating of 5), raising it to a 9. A human who spends 40 points on Strength gets it at 5. In karma gen, the troll doesn't have to pay to be a troll. However, getting that Strength of 9 now costs 90 Karma, as opposed to the human, who gets his 5 Strength at 42 Karma. So the troll isn't really "free". If he wants to start out with soft-maxed Body and Strength, it will cost him 96 Karma more than it will cost the human to have soft-maxed Body and Strength.

You might ask "Well, what if someone just gets picks a metatype and doesn't max out their stats - if, say, they pick ork and get a Body of 4 and Strength of 3, which is plenty for their Celtic druid? Which is where the controversy comes in. Sure, they can do that, saving 36 points over the human, in exchange for some caps on mental Attributes. But orks came out ahead in build points, too, with a net savings of 20 build points over a human, and enjoyed flat Attribute costs on top of that.

Elves, on the other hand, suffer no lower Attribute caps, so they would seem to get a 15 Karma savings over a human, with no drawbacks. But in my mind, someone who doesn't take advantage of an elf's higher caps in Agility and Charisma at char-gen is shooting himself in the foot. Hell, elves were the only ones that came behind humans in build points, but people still took elves, because of their bonuses to certain stats. Let the point-scrimpers have their piddly 15 Karma savings - I would rather have a Charisma of 8, even if it costs 30 Karma more than a human with a Charisma of 6.

Anyway, I love the SR fiction so I might pick up some of the mentioned books for that alone. Though I am curious about the crunch: someone mentioned power creep was setting in? Is there anything in particular to worry about? I'm getting sick of D&D 4e for that reason alone.

The worst offender is empathy software, which gives a bonus to social skills up to its rating (and it can go up to 6). Most people house rule or eliminate empathy software, and hopefully a future errata will nerf it (SR3 had a similar problem with the original mnemonic enhancer). Arsenal, Augmentation, and Street Magic have new toys, of course, but nothing really overpowering - a basic book sammie, adept, or mage could still hang with characters made with the new books, in my opinion. There is some power creep, but it is minimal.

Runner's Companion introduces karmagen, which, as I noted, makes more powerful characters. But just as with build points, you can adjust the amount of points to suit your campaign. It also has rules for playing everything from metavariants, to SURGElings, to infected (vampires, etc.), to shapeshifters, critters such as pixies, and even free spirits or AIs. For the most part, they do a decent job of balancing these character types. There is one huge glitch, though, which I think one of the developers already said was not intended. I discussed how karmagen's elimination of racial costs doesn't really break the game - well, there are two exceptions. Free spirits and AIs are both balanced, in large part, by having huge "racial" costs to play them. So when you use a system that eliminates racial costs, well... it's not pretty (Some of the pricier shapeshifters might fall into this category, too). Drakes and infected are all right, since being a drake or an infected is treated as a special Quality, rather than a racial cost.

[Draco18s]

Anyway, I love the SR fiction so I might pick up some of the mentioned books for that alone. Though I am curious about the crunch: someone mentioned power creep was setting in? Is there anything in particular to worry about? I'm getting sick of D&D 4e for that reason alone.

The power creep is very low. Its not like we're getting new guns that do more damage: nearly every single gun does 5P damage. The high velocity guns just do more damage for burst fire (and the stock HV SMG is a 4P gun) which doesn't help penetrate armor better (modified damage vs. modified armor -> P or S?). Armor values aren't really going up, though there are more ways to get armor (not all of which stacks and most people won't have them--breaking 15 armor (human) or 20 armor (troll) is more an exercise in twinkery than The Way To Play). Spells aren't "better," if one does "more damage" then it's also going to have higher drain, thus making it less likely to be used in excess (Stun Bolt is still the clear winner power wise).

All it does it give us more options, rather than making characters more powerful (you'll still notice the lack of cyber or bioware that's main/only function is to increase Willpower).

4e D&D though? The distinct lack of options is what kills me there. Screw the power creep, the base material is so low powered that it doesn't matter what feat I take (lets see...5 hit points or +1 to my healing surge? Or an extra surge? Well...my issue seems to be hitting things so lets find +1 to hit...with anything....no, no no no, nope, doesn't exist). I simply won't play 4e D&D until the power creep sets in and the things I can get are actually useful (Look Ma! I can take a feat and instead of having two wizard abilities, I can have THREE! Too bad three of them are shit).

As the previous post was made while I was making mine, it did occur to me that there is one SURGE quality which is a little ridiculous: Radar Sense. You can see objects, walls, etc. out to 40 meters and through up to a combined barrier rating of 30 (that means the character can see through one wall that isn't blast bunker thick). Combined with some mapping software and a comlink everyone knows the layout of a building by having the creepy anti-magic gnome* walk around it.

*That's who has the radar sense in our game. The GM is still WTFing over it. But to be fair, it's not better than having a dedicated hacker who just breaks into the building's systems and steal blueprints.

[Prime Mover]

4E Shadowrun I'm a convert, picked it up due to having lost some interest during 3rd edition. 4th edition has brought me and many players back to the table and were loving our SR again. Thats the bottom line for me, and like most other SR editions if the GM does his best to keep well read between games you can keep even the matrix flowing quick and easy. (cheat sheets help)

4E D&D ugh I've always been a rationalist and tried to support changes into new editions. Really like what they did with 3rd edition and on the fence with the whole 3.5 issue. But 4th edition hit our table once...players had fun but unanimously decided that it was no longer D&D and they wanted to play D&D not another new game. Several of them who have long time MMO experience also commented on its MMO feel. So we've recently come across Pathfinder beta and after everyone getting a look at it we've decided any future dnd style play with be with the Pathfinder rules.

[Draco18s]

So we've recently come across Pathfinder beta and after everyone getting a look at it we've decided any future dnd style play with be with the Pathfinder rules.

Our group hasn't found the time to actually look up Pathfinder, I keep meaning to (as a player), but haven't yet. That good?

[Degausser]

Hey, I don't have all the books, but I have one question:

Are Popup turrets back? And, if so, what book are they in? It doesn't seem right to play a vehicle rigger without an LMG on his van, but mounting it on a traditional turret is a good way to get caught by Lonestar.

[Draco18s]

Hey, I don't have all the books, but I have one question:

Are Popup turrets back? And, if so, what book are they in? It doesn't seem right to play a vehicle rigger without an LMG on his van, but mounting it on a traditional turret is a good way to get caught by Lonestar.

Arsenal

[Prime Mover]

Our group hasn't found the time to actually look up Pathfinder, I keep meaning to (as a player), but haven't yet. That good?

Pathfinder is an open beta with a free download of all materials. I don't wanna sound like a Paizo rep or anything but its worth the download and a look at the forums there if you liked 3.? versions.

[Cain]

the power creep hasn't been too bad in any book except Unwired. A pre/post Unwired otaku will show a definite difference; and with some karma, the Unwired one will eat the BBB character for lunch. There are other, similar problems.

Fluff-wise, there's been a lot of negative reviews on the material. I did a review of Runner Havens that basically said Hong Kong shone through, but everything else was insipid. I also did Ghost Cartels, which also had its moments. Lest you think it's just me, Here is Khadim's review of Emergence. He actually rated the book as a "waste of money".