Survival Tests, Killing them slowly... Options

[HappyDaze]

I have a run coming up in a toxic wilderness area that is having a terrible storm (high winds, acid rain per Arsenal, and heavy lightning to cause some wireless issues). This sets backdrop and puts some environmental difficulty modifiers (including some areas with rating 1-3 background counts) in play. However, I'm also looking at the Survival rules (SR4A, page 137) and seeing that it can help me put a clock on the run too, reducing the time in area to a few days at best. Essentially, long-term exertion and exposure will start adding up Stun boxes, and I'm OK with that.

However, it does raise some questions:
1) Does each character have to use their own Survival skill (or default to just Willpower - 1)? It looks that way, and I can't seem to find a good way to have a skilled character help out an unskilled character that doesn't actually give them a better dice pool than the trained character.
2) Will a Trauma Damper reduce the Stun damage froma failed Survival check, making the Mild terrain category harmless to someone with it?
3) Would it be fair to say that many of the outfits runner wear - like leather jackets and even the basic armor jacket - fall into the "inappropriate clothing" modifier? They had advanced warning and only a few of them selected wilderness outfits like the camouflage jumpsuit and fatigues. I'd like to reward those that "packed right" for the occasion.

Game in six hours. No rush...

[Matsci]

I have a run coming up in a toxic wilderness area that is having a terrible storm (high winds, acid rain per Arsenal, and heavy lightning to cause some wireless issues). This sets backdrop and puts some environmental difficulty modifiers (including some areas with rating 1-3 background counts) in play. However, I'm also looking at the Survival rules (SR4A, page 137) and seeing that it can help me put a clock on the run too, reducing the time in area to a few days at best. Essentially, long-term exertion and exposure will start adding up Stun boxes, and I'm OK with that.

However, it does raise some questions:
1) Does each character have to use their own Survival skill (or default to just Willpower - 1)? It looks that way, and I can't seem to find a good way to have a skilled character help out an unskilled character that doesn't actually give them a better dice pool than the trained character.
2) Will a Trauma Damper reduce the Stun damage froma failed Survival check, making the Mild terrain category harmless to someone with it?
3) Would it be fair to say that many of the outfits runner wear - like leather jackets and even the basic armor jacket - fall into the "inappropriate clothing" modifier? They had advanced warning and only a few of them selected wilderness outfits like the camouflage jumpsuit and fatigues. I'd like to reward those that "packed right" for the occasion.

Game in six hours. No rush...

1. Aid another Rules. Player with Survival Rolls, and adds his hits as dice to the poor person who is defaulting.

2. It reduces all stun damage, I beleve.

3. Depents on the eviroment. Leather in a Jungle? Bad idea. Leather in a cold, wet forest? Not so bad idea. Body armor in a desert? Bad idea.

[McAllister]

1) Make it some kind of teamwork test. Maybe the whole party is "helping" the guy with the most Survival dice, and they can spread the hits around, or maybe the ones with the skill just help the other ones.
2) I'm seeing DV 2S for a Mild terrain category. Does this person have a trauma damper and platelet factories? Anyway, I'd say this "damage" is not resistable by cyber or bioware. It can't be soaked, which is a big indicator, and it has more to do with dehydration and being worn down than blood loss and combat trauma.
3)I'd give a leather jacket -1 and an armour jacket -2. Maybe a good rule of thumb would be inappropriate civilian clothes = -1, armor value equal to or below Body = -2, and armor value above Body = -3. -4 would be for things like wearing a bikini to Antarctica. In the case of a toxic wilderness, I might have anything with Chemical Protection alleviate the Inappropriate Clothing mod. Besides, they could always take the damn stuff off.

Also, I think the endlessly-accumulating Stun boxes is a bit harsh. Maybe net hits over the threshold on subsequent Survival tests should let the characters take off boxes (either one net hit = one box, or two net hits = one box). If you had a bad day and didn't find any water (or just found polluted sludge), you'll feel better if you hit a nice, clear stream the next day, right?

[Zaranthan]

Also, I think the endlessly-accumulating Stun boxes is a bit harsh. Maybe net hits over the threshold on subsequent Survival tests should let the characters take off boxes (either one net hit = one box, or two net hits = one box). If you had a bad day and didn't find any water (or just found polluted sludge), you'll feel better if you hit a nice, clear stream the next day, right?

Better now, yes, but you still had 24 hours of stress from dehydration. Your cracked lip doesn't just magically heal because it's wet now. Your foot still throbs from when you got lightheaded and tripped. Your eyes are no longer burning, but they're still sore. Fatigue damage requires REAL rest in civilization to recuperate from. Even magic can't heal it, your body just doesn't have the resources to do what it needs to do.

[the_real_elwood]

If you want advanced rules for survival tests, check out Target:Wasteland. I believe there's rules in there where one character can make a survival test for a group of people for a certain penalty. It also has guidelines for penalties for things like inappropriate clothing and equipment. It's SR3 rules, but you could adapt it to SR4 for a little more balanced guidelines for survival tests.

And as for inappropriate clothing, synthleathers or an armor jacket aren't necessarily inappropriate for the wilderness, presuming they're appropriate clothes for the climate. Something that's appropriate for the climate of the Seattle 'plex would also be appropriate in the surrounding wilderness in the Salish-Shidhe Council. However, any of your runners who brought along camo clothing should get the bonus for having camoflage appropriate to the environment, and the other runners should be penalized as such. This just wouldn't translate to a penalty on your survival test.

[HappyDaze]

What about Actioneer Business Clothes?

[the_real_elwood]

There's a range of penalties you can assess for the character having inappropriate clothing. Trying to survive in the tundra wearing a bikini is the most severe example. If a character is wearing business clothes (which I assume includes dress shoes), and is doing a lot of fairly extreme hiking around the mountains, I might assess a penalty for that. If it's heavily raining and the character doesn't have any waterproof gear, that could be a penalty as well. The rules on it are loose, but if a character is doing a lot of tromping around in the wilderness in business clothes, I might assess a -1 penalty to their survival test. I mean, even Bear Grylls has a nice pair of boots.

But as far as the standard cyberpunk runner outfit of syntleathers, combat boots, and day-glo mohawk, the only penalty I'd assess in a standard forest wilderness condition is for inappropriate camoflage.

[Dumori]

Heavy military armor with that heating and air con mod from the BBB by by negative modifiers 90% of the time.

[HappyDaze]

Heavy military armor with that heating and air con mod from the BBB by by negative modifiers 90% of the time.

Yeah, um...

That's nothing like what they've got available to them. Thankfully, the opposition doesn't have any either.

[Dumori]

How about Light milspec armor? Or tbh any full suite of armor even the urban exploers thigncan be made to cool and heat.

[the_real_elwood]

Isn't environmental adaption a modification that can be added to any armor?

[DuctShuiTengu]

1. Aid another Rules. Player with Survival Rolls, and adds his hits as dice to the poor person who is defaulting.

Bonus dice from teamwork are capped by your skill. Which makes it useless as a way to help a teammate who's defaulting.

[Dumori]

Isn't environmental adaption a modification that can be added to any armor?

No only full body armor

[Totentanz]

Better now, yes, but you still had 24 hours of stress from dehydration. Your cracked lip doesn't just magically heal because it's wet now. Your foot still throbs from when you got lightheaded and tripped. Your eyes are no longer burning, but they're still sore. Fatigue damage requires REAL rest in civilization to recuperate from. Even magic can't heal it, your body just doesn't have the resources to do what it needs to do.

People rest in the outdoors all the time. You think everyone in the world has the benefits of civilization to survive?

Seriously, this is one of those common sense issues that come up in RP games a lot. If the characters pack appropriately, including food, water or water purification, shelter, etc, give them bonuses, or simply ignore the rolls. If they seem unsure what to do, let the character(s) with survival make tests and tell them the appropriate stuff to take. If they run off into your inhospitable wilderness (nice idea for a run, btw) without prepping, feel free to assess penalties based on that.

I've done probably more than my fair share of deep wilderness camping over the years. There are three criteria for clothing in this situation. The first is temperature. Heat exhaustion or hypothermia can kill much faster than dehydration. The second is moisture. If they are facing rainfall or something like a swamp they need to stay dry. People have nearly died of hypothermia in 80 degree weather because there was lots of wind and they were wet. Additionally, moisture breeds disease. The final one is weight. If their clothing is weighing them down while they are having to move over rough terrain, it's going to slow them down and tire them out. The saying is "an ounce in the morning is a pound at night." There is an entire industry focused around providing reliable, light backpacking and extreme sports equipment. If they are out there with a canteen and their best club get-up, it should hurt, at least a bit.

The final consideration is the most important: how do you want to run your game? Is your purpose for the run to demonstrate how mundane things like weather can be a threat even to a sam? If you want to make it about the survival challenge, as so many movies and books have done, feel free to spend a lot of time RP'ing individual decisions with the players. Read up a bit on real-world survival tactics and see how the characters measure up. On the other hand, if you just wanted a different setting for your run, abstract it to a few dice rolls, apply the appropriate bonuses and penalties, and carry on with the run. The only wrong way to handle this is do something your group doesn't enjoy.

[Zaranthan]

People rest in the outdoors all the time. You think everyone in the world has the benefits of civilization to survive?

Intimate knowledge of your local area's flora & fauna and a loyal dog to curl up with at night are a suitable substitute for civilization. If you live in the bush day to day, you've got a lifestyle out there. If you're just visiting, it's a Survival roll, no matter how many episodes of Survivorman you've committed to memory.

Seriously, this is one of those common sense issues that come up in RP games a lot. If the characters pack appropriately, including food, water or water purification, shelter, etc, give them bonuses, or simply ignore the rolls. If they seem unsure what to do, let the character(s) with survival make tests and tell them the appropriate stuff to take. If they run off into your inhospitable wilderness (nice idea for a run, btw) without prepping, feel free to assess penalties based on that.

Fair enough. If they've got appropriate supplies, they don't need to forage (which is the vast majority of what a Survival test represents).

I've done probably more than my fair share of deep wilderness camping over the years. There are three criteria for clothing in this situation. The first is temperature. Heat exhaustion or hypothermia can kill much faster than dehydration. The second is moisture. If they are facing rainfall or something like a swamp they need to stay dry. People have nearly died of hypothermia in 80 degree weather because there was lots of wind and they were wet. Additionally, moisture breeds disease. The final one is weight. If their clothing is weighing them down while they are having to move over rough terrain, it's going to slow them down and tire them out. The saying is "an ounce in the morning is a pound at night." There is an entire industry focused around providing reliable, light backpacking and extreme sports equipment. If they are out there with a canteen and their best club get-up, it should hurt, at least a bit.

Good stuff to keep in mind. My interpretation of the OP was that your last sentence was the most applicable. They had fair warning that they were going to be slogging through a wasteland for several days, but have taken no precautions. They're out there with assault rifles and FFBA instead of a sturdy knife and fire-starting materials.

The final consideration is the most important: how do you want to run your game? Is your purpose for the run to demonstrate how mundane things like weather can be a threat even to a sam? If you want to make it about the survival challenge, as so many movies and books have done, feel free to spend a lot of time RP'ing individual decisions with the players. Read up a bit on real-world survival tactics and see how the characters measure up. On the other hand, if you just wanted a different setting for your run, abstract it to a few dice rolls, apply the appropriate bonuses and penalties, and carry on with the run. The only wrong way to handle this is do something your group doesn't enjoy.

This is, of course, the most important point of any game situation. Personally, I'm trusting HappyDaze's judgment of his table: that the players don't mind the occasional catastrophic obstacle to their survival, and facing down Mother Nature is a refreshing change of pace from cyberzombies and HTR teams. Good advice in this paragraph, to be sure.

[HappyDaze]

Personally, I'm trusting HappyDaze's judgment of his table

You really shouldn't have - I killed the game tonight. Not because of the issues of this post, but because I've found myself disliking more of the SR rules than I like. Too many broken bits in a system that has very poor game balance and a combat system that takes way to long to resolve. I'm looking for something rules-light right now becasue SR has sure driven me away from clunky-ass old relic games that have a modifier for every thing and dozens of mini-systems within the rules.

[McAllister]

I'm sorry to hear, that, HappyDaze. What sort of rules-light system might you have in mind?

[Totentanz]

Intimate knowledge of your local area's flora & fauna and a loyal dog to curl up with at night are a suitable substitute for civilization. If you live in the bush day to day, you've got a lifestyle out there. If you're just visiting, it's a Survival roll, no matter how many episodes of Survivorman you've committed to memory.

You have a point. I guess I was thinking that the survival ability would help with the actual knowledge. However, if they don't prepare, all the knowledge in the world won't help.

I agree completely that having Nature be the challenge instead of cyberzombies is a great change of pace. Sometimes it is little things like this in games that brings home the mortality of PC's.

However, I don't need to watch Discovery shows, I've done it myself. : )


HappyDaze:
I'm sorry to hear that. SR is definitely a complex system. Like McAllister, I'd like to know which, if any, systems appeal to you.

Also, don't forget you can streamline the rules. There is nothing wrong with simply house-ruling certain mini-games out and replacing them with lighter mechanics. Were there any systems in particular that frustrated you?

[HappyDaze]

Were there any systems in particular that frustrated you?

Let's start with a three-roll combat system (roll to hit, roll to avoid being hit, roll to avoid damage) with each roll adjusted for numerous modifiers. Then let's add in all the crap that requires more rolls (stick-n-shock, toxins, white phosphorus, etc.) that my players seem to love.

Let's also talk about the silly-fast 3 second combat round and the terrible IP system. Even non-augments go way too fast unless everyone (like the stuffer shack vendor) is in ice-cold spec-ops badass fully prepared for combat 24/7. Sure, you can gimp the NPCs and say they're unprepared, but try gimping the PCs (I've never seen one of them actually turn their wired reflexes off) and see what happens. Anything not in the immediate vicienity of combat will never get there in time to matter - if your PCs have 3 minutes to get in and out, that's an eternity with the SR rules. I find that really limiting, and any fight with any numbers (5 PCs vs. 10 cram-heads) takes forever in realtime to resove a six-second fight!

Modifiers - there's a fucking modifier for everything, and sometimes there's multiple modifiers for the same thing (I'm shooting in melee -3, but I'm point blank +2). Yes there is the whole eyeballing modiers bit, but really a -4 when the guy has a poolf of 15 dice doesn't fucking matter all that much. Modifiers just screw the people that don't min-max.

Fighting is better than sneaking - often sneaking gets totally fucked by a singel bad roll, and if that's the cae, the one to shoot first usually wins. So the PCs often jut decide to shoot without sneaking. Mechanically, it's often the smart choice regardless of what the setting tries to tell us. Sure, as a GM I can always send in more forces to eliminate them, but 'bigger hammer' isn't my idea of fun.

Vehicle combat. There's a whole section on it and a few archetypes that depend on it. Beyond that, almost everyone drives at some point. And the rules are terrible.

The matrix. I WANT the matrix to be important. If I didn't, I wouldn't (and now don't) play SR. No one wants to learn it because of the complexity. No one wants to play it because it interferes with their purile fun of shooting people in the face. I don't end up wanting to run it because no one will know the system (I already had to hand hold the magician's player through the magic system).

Wildly imbalanced crap - like possession/channeling, and some of the more broken martial arts tricks. I'll also throw in scene-breaking crap like the Radar Sensor (too many things can go to crap if the PCs can just see through walls - and very few people have radar jammers as standard), and some of the 'I Win' spells (Mind Control, etc.) and Critter powers (Fear). I usually try to shy away from using these things as a GM, but when you've got a PC build around possession...

Fiddly bits of gear are just too important. Often they overshadow the abilities of the character. Sure, it may be a feature for some, or a genre bit, but I don't like it. It's alos here that many of the game-breakers can hide. I already mentioned Stick-N-Shock, toxins, and some of the chemicals out there (I've seen the "freeze foam - I win" trick). My players took to muchkin stuff like flies on shit (only one of them ever used regular ammo, and everyone looked at him funny the one time he did). Rating 4 power focus at character gen, check...

Putting it all together is a bitch. Too much prep time goes into every session. Between the modifers, the fiddly bits of gear, checking on how the rules interact with this or that other obscure rule... It's a waste of my time. I don't mind spending a few hours prepping for a session - but I want most of it to be creative time planning possibilities for the adventure - instead, most of it becomes 'homework' checking on the rules for various shit.

OK, fuck it, I'm done. I think I'm ready to play something like Cortex, D6, Savage Worlds, Ubiquity, or Unisystem for my gaming right now.

[Totentanz]

Based on what you've said, I have to agree that the system might not be right for you. Good luck on your other gaming adventures.

[Zaranthan]

Okay, I'm going to omnislash your post. Not because I want to start a flame war, not to pick on you, but because I feel SR4(A) is a good system and you sound infuriated with its quirks (a little) and your players (a lot). I'll try to address each core problem with equal attention.

Let's start with a three-roll combat system (roll to hit, roll to avoid being hit, roll to avoid damage) with each roll adjusted for numerous modifiers. Then let's add in all the crap that requires more rolls (stick-n-shock, toxins, white phosphorus, etc.) that my players seem to love.

Combat can be clumsy, but modifiers don't change much. Surprise round: you figure ranges, lighting, available cover, and assume everyone involved moves to take advantage of the situation (their lives ARE in danger, after all). Any alterations will be announced, such as throwing a smoke grenade, shooting out the lights, or flipping over a table. If your players are using battlefield modifiers and extra-rule gear every IP, then you're running some pretty hardcore combat and should expect to spend most of the table time figuring out who's getting shot and how hard. If you don't want to run a wargame...I'll sum this point up at the end. Assume I attach these two sentences to each paragraph.

Let's also talk about the silly-fast 3 second combat round and the terrible IP system. Even non-augments go way too fast unless everyone (like the stuffer shack vendor) is in ice-cold spec-ops badass fully prepared for combat 24/7. Sure, you can gimp the NPCs and say they're unprepared, but try gimping the PCs (I've never seen one of them actually turn their wired reflexes off) and see what happens. Anything not in the immediate vicienity of combat will never get there in time to matter - if your PCs have 3 minutes to get in and out, that's an eternity with the SR rules. I find that really limiting, and any fight with any numbers (5 PCs vs. 10 cram-heads) takes forever in realtime to resove a six-second fight!

Non-rhetorical question: have you ever been in a firefight? Have you ever been shot at? Three seconds is a long fucking time when a dozen people with automatic weapons start trying to kill each other. To gimp the PCs, give them social penalties for spilling their drinks when they leave their Wired' on. Make NPCs as suspicious as the PCs when they want to keep their backs to the wall and eyes on the exits while trying not to draw attention. You've got the timescale right for combat vs. response time, but remote response isn't supposed to end combat, it's to drive the PCs. I'll get back to this.

Modifiers - there's a fucking modifier for everything, and sometimes there's multiple modifiers for the same thing (I'm shooting in melee -3, but I'm point blank +2). Yes there is the whole eyeballing modiers bit, but really a -4 when the guy has a poolf of 15 dice doesn't fucking matter all that much. Modifiers just screw the people that don't min-max.

I'm with you here: there are a LOT of modifiers, but you don't seem to appreciate their impact. If I'm throwing 15 dice at somebody, that's 5 Agi + 5 Automatics + 2 Specialization + 2 Smartlink + 1 Reflex Recorder. Pretty damn minmaxed. I'm either shooting at a security guard with 7 dice (Reaction 4 + Dodge 3) or a High-Threat Response Sergeant with 7 dice (Augmented Reaction 7, plus he's shooting back). I'm expecting 2-3 net hits. If my pool is reduced to 11, I'm only expecting 1 hit, maybe 2. Modifiers matter, even to the minmaxed.

Fighting is better than sneaking - often sneaking gets totally fucked by a singel bad roll, and if that's the cae, the one to shoot first usually wins. So the PCs often jut decide to shoot without sneaking. Mechanically, it's often the smart choice regardless of what the setting tries to tell us. Sure, as a GM I can always send in more forces to eliminate them, but 'bigger hammer' isn't my idea of fun.

Alarms should cost the players more than a few bullets. Doors should seal, security drones should be deployed, entire building wings should be locked down (specifically, the one the players are in or need to get in). If you don't want to send the HTR teams, why should the players worry about them?

Vehicle combat. There's a whole section on it and a few archetypes that depend on it. Beyond that, almost everyone drives at some point. And the rules are terrible.

You're not saying what you don't like here, so I can only give generic advice. Vehicle rigging is a spotlight encounter, and SR's core M.O. is a rotating spotlight. You let a good car chase happen now & then to give the rigger a chance to show off his tricked out van, and occasionally make one of the non-riggers handle their bike to make them appreciate having the rigger around, but it's probably not going to be a central campaign gimmick.

The matrix. I WANT the matrix to be important. If I didn't, I wouldn't (and now don't) play SR. No one wants to learn it because of the complexity. No one wants to play it because it interferes with their purile fun of shooting people in the face. I don't end up wanting to run it because no one will know the system (I already had to hand hold the magician's player through the magic system).

No system advice for this one, pure player problem. If your players have sent you a clear message that they don't want to play that part of the game, then downplay it. You should be having fun, but not at everyone else's expense. If they don't care what their firewall rating is, or how to break encryption, or what a Crack sprite can do to their cyberarms, then handwave it. The Matrix can be important as a plot device if nobody wants to handle the details. Make someone take a good hacker contact, and charge them through the nose to have their hands held. There's a very good write-up of an entire run through a corp residential enclave where the team's matrix support was provided 100% by a contact whom they had to offer an equal share of the pay. It works.

Wildly imbalanced crap - like possession/channeling, and some of the more broken martial arts tricks. I'll also throw in scene-breaking crap like the Radar Sensor (too many things can go to crap if the PCs can just see through walls - and very few people have radar jammers as standard), and some of the 'I Win' spells (Mind Control, etc.) and Critter powers (Fear). I usually try to shy away from using these things as a GM, but when you've got a PC build around possession...

Possession isn't the end of the world like everyone seems to think it is. Read the rules again (I know you're sick from walking the mage through them, but you ARE the referee), find the weak points. Background counts, wards, punks with Aptitude: Banishing, and as always: shooting the mage right in the damn face are all good ways to show a Shedim that they're not gods. If the players have cyber-radar and powerful spirits with Fear, they should be sent into installations that can handle radar scanners and paracritters. Otherwise, you're just not offering them a proper challenge.

Fiddly bits of gear are just too important. Often they overshadow the abilities of the character. Sure, it may be a feature for some, or a genre bit, but I don't like it. It's alos here that many of the game-breakers can hide. I already mentioned Stick-N-Shock, toxins, and some of the chemicals out there (I've seen the "freeze foam - I win" trick). My players took to muchkin stuff like flies on shit (only one of them ever used regular ammo, and everyone looked at him funny the one time he did). Rating 4 power focus at character gen, check...

If they want to play hardball, then don't let them crowd the plate. A sammie with stick & shock should be shooting at insulated targets. A mage with a R4 power focus should need it to beat the enemy's Counterspelling. SR is eggshells and hammers. Don't let the players face eggshells with squeaky mallets.

Putting it all together is a bitch. Too much prep time goes into every session. Between the modifers, the fiddly bits of gear, checking on how the rules interact with this or that other obscure rule... It's a waste of my time. I don't mind spending a few hours prepping for a session - but I want most of it to be creative time planning possibilities for the adventure - instead, most of it becomes 'homework' checking on the rules for various shit.

OK, fuck it, I'm done. I think I'm ready to play something like Cortex, D6, Savage Worlds, Ubiquity, or Unisystem for my gaming right now.

This is all you, brother. If you don't want to play the game, then nobody can help you enjoy it. SR is a game of modifiers, fiddly bits, and on-the-fly rule interaction GM calls. SR4 is amazingly simple when it comes to off-the-cuff rulings.

I said I'd come back to the wargaming thing: your players sound like they want to shoot people in the face for money, get paid, and throw parties. If this isn't what you want, then you need to sit down with them and find a middle ground. I'm assuming your players are your friends (most face-to-face groups are), so they should be understanding. You have a right to have fun while playing a game.

[HappyDaze]

This is all you, brother. If you don't want to play the game, then nobody can help you enjoy it. SR is a game of modifiers, fiddly bits, and on-the-fly rule interaction GM calls. SR4 is amazingly simple when it comes to off-the-cuff rulings.

Too often the on-the-fly calls are contradicted by some fiddly-shit rule that the rules-lawyers will pull out. This game breeds them - look to these forums alone to see rules-lawyering to the Nth degree. As a GM, I can either let them trample my fun, or I can rail against the rules and trample theirs. Either way, someone loses.

If they want to play hardball, then don't let them crowd the plate. A sammie with stick & shock should be shooting at insulated targets. A mage with a R4 power focus should need it to beat the enemy's Counterspelling.

Escalation - got it. An arms race is your answer? And what about the players that don't gravitate to munchy power-gaming? Do we want to push them there too? Oh, yeah... we're on Dumpshock, so the answer has got to be YES to that one...

I feel SR4(A) is a good system and you sound infuriated with its quirks (a little) and your players (a lot).

I feel that playing with the SR4/SR4A ruleset is a chore that detracts from my enjoyment of the game and also encourages players to be min-maxing rules-lawyes even if that's not their normal playing style. Yes, I do blame much of the munchy crap my players do on whifs of shit Dumpshock has brought to their noses.

[Totentanz]

Zaran: Your analysis is astute, and your efforts laudable.

HappyDaze:

You need to have a Come to Jesus Meeting with your players. Explain to them your issues with the game as it stands. If you are honest without being accusatory maybe they will hear you and you can work something out.

This isn't really about SR anymore. It's about you and your group not gelling in terms of the game you want to play. People have different styles. If you aren't cut out to be their GM, cool. If they aren't cut out to be your players, also cool. If SR isn't cut out to be your system, completely cool. What isn't cool is not having fun at your hobby because of these issues. Handle the issues, or walk away.

Yes, I do blame much of the munchy crap my players do on whifs of shit Dumpshock has brought to their noses.

If you don't like the forum and the game, then just leave. Nobody likes a troll. Quit blaming your crappy gaming experience on a forum and a system. The only person responsible for your fun is you.

[HappyDaze]

You need to have a Come to Jesus Meeting with your players. Explain to them your issues with the game as it stands. If you are honest without being accusatory maybe they will hear you and you can work something out. .... What isn't cool is not having fun at your hobby because of these issues. Handle the issues, or walk away.

We might work something out on our own, without feebly turning to a figure from Christian mythology. And while our solution might use the SR setting, if it's to include me, then it certainly won't be run with any edition of the SR ruleset.

If you don't like the forum and the game, then just leave. Nobody likes a troll. Quit blaming your crappy gaming experience on a forum and a system. The only person responsible for your fun is you.

So I'm now a troll when I don't like the system? I'll lay blame where I like, and if you don't like it Tote, don't bother to reply (just a reminder, you can add me to your ignore list if you like). I can come here and tell people that the SR4 game is a steaming pile of crap just as others here can and will continue sing its praises. The fact that I've played and run with the system for years - and tried hard to make it work - means I'm not just trolling. As for the forum, look at how many threads are all about abusive over-the-top specializing. Look at how many encourage total min-maxing. Look at how few encourage suboptimal choices for the sake of characterization. Face it, while there might be exceptions, Dumpshockers as a whole post as min-max munchkins.

By the way Tote, do you really believe that encouraging a player/GM arms race that only pushes the moderate players into the camp of the min-max munchkins is "astute advice"?

[Falconer]

Happy... basically, if you don't like the game you don't. There's little reason to keep posting. The only reason to keep posting is because you want to be A. a troll or B. convinced otherwise.


I think your bigger problem is with rules lawyers and that you need to have everything down exactly right. As far as 4th ed goes... it's a huge change on 2 and 3e... where you not only had to keep in mind if something changed the size of the dice pool, but also which mods changed the target number (is it a 3 or is it a 5 or is it a 9. (roll a 6, roll another d6 and get a 3 or better). In SR4 the TN is always blessedly 5.

Also activity on forums is NOT a good analogue for activity in games. In game, while I'll sometimes make a quick dissention from a spot call and give a fast argument. I don't let it stop the game for more than 30s, and always make it clear to keep the game flowing. On a forum like this, there's lots of time to look at rules, and theorycraft. In fact, the theorycrafting is some of the fun of the system to some dumpshockers.


While I'm not immune to sometimes asking the GM are you sure how that works. I almost always immediately follow it with, run it as you see fit to keep the game moving. (Rule 0). In your case, it basically comes down to, it sounds like you need fast play rules. In which case, I suggest you sit down with the book, work out which pool modifiers you're going to keep (both positive and negative). Then hand it to your players and tell them for sake of keeping things running smoothly, I'm limiting the dice pool mods to this quick reference card. Plus/minus any relevant situational bonus/penalty as the GM sees fit.


Quite frankly... in SR. Magic always has been powerful. It's one of the driving plot elements. Oh crap, we've gotten set in our ways... we had a nice established order, then magic comes and gums up the works with it's reemergence. What do we do now, and how do we deal with it. Generally the best way to handle that is to A. keep it reasonably powerful (don't nerf it into the ground), but B. make sure mundanes can still recourse to 'heavy weapons' if a force 7 or 8 spirit comes out to play. (EG: spirits aren't invulnerable... they're magical creatures w/ their own, if diffferent, sets of strengths and weaknesses. called shots for damage work... ItNW doesn't stack... etc. etc. etc. All of which are strictly RAW btw and aren't houseruling. The bigger problem I see is people try and explain 'how' for fluff, then make house rules counter to the RAW then complain that it's broken)