3rd Edition Decks, Why are they missed? Options

[LostProxy]

Now I'm a whipper snapper (early 90's kid) compared to most of the people around and when I started playing table top it was late 3.5 early 4E DnD. Got into Shadowrun not long after that and ever since I did I've seen people complaining about some lost complexity. One thing that I see come up time and time again is about how the decks would grow with the hacker or something along those lines. How the decks separated the wage slave computer nerds from real matrix masters. Could someone please explain this to me? I do not have the time to read through an entire edition to find the answer to one question.

[LostProxy]

Now I'm a whipper snapper (early 90's kid) compared to most of the people around and when I started playing table top it was late 3.5 early 4E DnD. Got into Shadowrun not long after that and ever since I did I've seen people complaining about some lost complexity. One thing that I see come up time and time again is about how the decks would grow with the hacker or something along those lines. How the decks separated the wage slave computer nerds from real matrix masters. Could someone please explain this to me? I do not have the time to read through an entire edition to find the answer to one question.

[Seerow]

I did play 3e and I don't get what the love for the old decks was either. I can understand to some degree wanting to be able to increase your hardware as you got better, but the exact mechanics used were pretty awful.

[Yerameyahu]

It's just nostalgia. Decks were hugely expensive, so only 'real hackers' had them. Deckers.

[ggodo]

It's the same thing with the computer tech buffs nowadays. You know, the guys who can run three copies of Crysis on Super High.

[phlapjack77]

Probably some of the nostalgia came from all of those who grew up reading the William Gibson books, with the Ono-Sendai decks and all that stuff

[CanRay]

Ask Bull. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[LostProxy]

That's too bad :/ I was hoping to reverse engineer some mechanics to give some extra substance to the hackers. I like the idea of elite machines capable of more then what your comlink can chug out. While I love the simplicity (ok...most of it is decently simple) sometimes I want something to separate me more from the script kiddie then a handful of dice.

[LostProxy]

Ask Bull. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I see what you did there.

[Medicineman]

I like the idea of elite machines capable of more then what your comlink can chug out.
there are elite Comlinks like these in WAR!
If You really like the Idea ,use these (and if You want to "Fluff it Out" buy the Fairlight Excalibur Hardcase Deck(50 ¥) and Stuff it out with said Elite Comlink)
or You use a Nexus (from Unwired)

with an elite Dance
Medicineman

[Fatum]

>needs to read a single section of a single rulebook
>complains how he doesn't have time to read through the entire edition

Basically, your question contains the answer already. Since you could update and customize the decks, it was pretty clear who's a pro decker and who's a green noob.
Not that you can't upgrade commlinks, though - but you know, the grass is always greener and the sky more blue in the previous edition.

[LurkerOutThere]

I believe on the the whole the decks aren't missed, some people just have a deep seated need to advance their moral outrage over thsoe who got here after them based on anything. There were certain fiddly bits lost with the hacking change too, but the trade offs are well worth it if I can have hacking involved int eh game without sending everyone else on a food run while he does his thing. Honestly if i had my ways i'd make things even more streamlined.

[Fortinbras]

Rule #1 of Shadowrun: The Decker Always Dies!

At least in 2nd Edition it was.

[Bigity]

'Decking' and the associated hardware is just cooler than 'hackers' running around with a glorified smartphone.

I still think plugging a jack into your head should give a bonus over trodes.

Of course, these statements are personal opinion.

As for decks growing with the character, it was kind of like a mage working towards some kick ass foci, when you finally got that MPCP 8 deck, you felt like you were the bee's knees, etc.

As a hacker, you pretty much start with a max rating commlink, unless you get into the War! stuff which seems to amplify faults in the system anyway.


As for Lurker, I think he might be the one with some deep seated issues (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

The thing is, everyone starts at or near the top in SR4, except for Deltaware. Especially with 'Restricted Gear' (what a mess). Mages and TMs are least have to initiate… unless you're using unchecked Karmagen.

[suoq]

Note: I went from SR1 to SR4.

What has consistently annoyed me about SR4 is that it's based on the time period it was written while claiming to be an extension of the games before it.

Now that we have androids and iPhones, Shadowrun suddenly has androids and iPhones. As 3d printers become common in the real world, I suspect the next version of shadowrun will have 3d "make your own gear" technology embedded in the system, not because that's the direction the Shadowrun world is going but because it's the direction our world is going. I'm also betting on more changes to AR as the writers get used to RL Augmented reality, where what displays depends on your software more than their data (why look at just what their commlink says about someone when you can instead look at what public databases say about someone, especially if you have access to a facial recognition database to add more data references?)

I don't miss the decks, but I find it sad that SR4 went to tiny commlinks just because, at this point in time, we went to tiny commlinks. It could have gone to wearable computing and fingertip sensors and retinal scanners (something like Snow Crash or Minority Report) but it just became the same history with the present day wrapped around it, evolving from now instead of from the Shadowrun future.

[KarmaInferno]

I think that ship sailed in 2nd edition, suoq, when they started updating the 'future history' timeline with events that had happened between editions.

I think decks are cooler simply because they are more cyberpunk than commlinks.


-k

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

For Elite, use a Nexus. They are a bit less portable than a Milspec Comlink, but can be much more "powerful". (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

The thing is, everyone starts at or near the top in SR4, except for Deltaware. Especially with 'Restricted Gear' (what a mess). Mages and TMs are least have to initiate… unless you're using unchecked Karmagen.

You could build a Deck in 2nd/3rd that was better than the Fairlight Excaliber, and for about 1/4 of the cost. So, Deckers, in my experience, could start with the best they could get, right out of the gate, then as well. There is really no difference.

[Bigity]

Uh, since you couldn't build custom decks during chargen I'm not sure how that would have worked. You could build one for cheaper than off-the-shelf, but it took ages of time.

[Medicineman]

Could one of the Mods merge these 2 Threads please ?
or are they seperate on purpose ?

with a merging Dance
Medicineman

[Seerow]

As 3d printers become common in the real world, I suspect the next version of shadowrun will have 3d "make your own gear" technology embedded in the system, not because that's the direction the Shadowrun world is going but because it's the direction our world is going.

Correct me if I'm wrong but is this not exactly what the desktop forges are?

[Yerameyahu]

See, what bothers *me* is when a future/sci-fi setting has cruddier tech than I do today. Thank god SR4 addressed this.

[Bigity]

Sure, but is that something you want to change in a game nearly 20 years into it's history? You can, and it's fine, but some people liked the established lore, with all it's glorious faults and head-scratchers.

In any case, for some people, decks are always going to be cooler than commlinks. No big deal.

[Cheops]

Incoming IMO and YMMV:

Cyberdecks, being cruder than what we have in real life, helps me immerse myself more in a dark world of dystopian failure and angst. One of the things that hooked me (and inspired my first SR character) was the 3e picture of the female decker jacked into her deck while hiding in a dumpster. Something about it seemed so raw and cool at the time.

Cyberdecks could NOT be better than the Farlight Calibur at character creation unless your GM was allowing you to have construction time at the start of the game. This was generally only done for very high powered games because it allowed the rigger, decker, and mage to all build their doom machines ahead of time and release them on the world from Mission 1.

This was part of the fun of cyberdecks. You had three options for getting up to the bleeding edge: buy it, build it, or steal it. All three had interesting and exciting character building to it. Now I spend my 2.2-8 BP and I'll never have anything better. There was also a lot more character to the decks themselves. Now you have 4 stats (RFSS) that affect how your commlink works -- back then there were also 4 stats (BEMS). However, MPCP acted as a cap on programs and stats (you got MPCP*2 for stats none could be higher than MPCP) and you could vary within that. So you could have your deck for sleazing (high M = Masking which was half your Detection Difficulty) and a deck you whipped out for when you wanted to kick ass and take names (high B = Bod). There was also the difference between I/O rates and active versus storage memory. Compare that to now where you start with 6/6/6/6 and the one deck allows you to be a cyber-troll as well as a cyber-ninja -- sure you have versatility but also boredom because you do it all. That was one of the cool parts of doing an all decker party or having decker contacts as a decker: if your specialty was Sleazing then you could team up with your buddy who's a specialist in Combat Decking. Also it made it freaking frightening if you fragged up as a sleazer and had to fight or if you were combat and had to fight through a red chokepoint (plus cybercombat actually had interesting options back then too other than "I hit him with my cyber-sword"). I still remember one or two characters who skimped on active memory and I/O to save money for programs who drekked themselves when they had to switch from one role to another -- "Drek, I evade again! Hurry up and load you stupid Attack program!"

Now this is all just talking about the deck -- programs throw different kinks into this but that's for a different thread.