Writing fan supplements, by fan demand Options

[Stahlseele]

Don't Target:Wastelands and Hazard Pay cover those pretty excessively already?
As for alt.War, I'm feeling that my draft is getting out of hand as I try to fit everything I want to see in SR in it, so I'm trying to cannibalize pieces of it into smaller supplements.

Yeah, space has been covered here and there . . it's all over the place, basically, no rhyme nor reason to it as far as i can tell.

@alt.war
ah, i see.

[StealthSigma]

Having my doubts about this one, though - most runners shoot at the distances not giving them penalties, and the ones that do not use zoom....

That shouldn't be the reason to have doubts. 5BP for a martial art advantage that's provided by an Improved Range Finder which is basically a 0.2BP weapon mod it also has comparable requirements as a personalized grip (10 Threshold and Kit requirement). The cost of it is pretty negligible outside of some fringe cases where the character uses weapons like disposable commlinks. Even so, that fringe case is probably better served by directing the 5BP to get it to something else. If you're going to spend 5BP on a martial art maneuver to reduce your range penalties by 1 then you might as well just take the Hawkeye PQ instead and get the better penalties (0/0/1/3 vs 0/0/2/5) as well as the perception bonus (which I have always interpreted as reducing the distance penalty on spot checks by 1). You lose out on cybereyes but it's not like replacing those with other gear is particularly difficult.

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Can you even quick draw bows? I wouldn't say they're pistol-sized.

Quick draw arrows so that you can free action ready instead of simple action. You get some nice action economy and get 3 shots every 2 action phases rather than 2 shots. You end up with Draw-Shoot-Draw | Shoot-Draw-Shoot rather than Draw-Shoot | Draw-Shoot.

[Fatum]

With the iajutsu maneuver? Sure. Its more useful for quick-drawing the ARROWS, though, as it gets around the Ready Weapon limitation and lets you fire twice.

Quick draw arrows so that you can free action ready instead of simple action. You get some nice action economy and get 3 shots every 2 action phases rather than 2 shots. You end up with Draw-Shoot-Draw | Shoot-Draw-Shoot rather than Draw-Shoot | Draw-Shoot.

Okay, I get the idea.

I don't think so. Melee + Firearm is the POINT - because melee is usually a lot weaker than guns. Usually its way better to fire twice instead of punch once. Or even twice.

And why shouldn't it be weaker than guns? It is weaker than guns in RL and fiction, too.

Look at all the other style bonuses. for 5BP, you basically get a +1 skill dice or other unique advantage. Kung Fu's +1 all Dodge is pretty amazing. All the +1DV from martial arts is two equivalent strength, which is 20 points.

This is not entirely true. You don't get a bonus point to Dodge skill, you get a bonus point to Full Dodge tests specifically. Or melee dodges, or what have you. Just as +1DV from martial arts is not equivalent to raising Str two points, since it doesn't affect the Str-linked skill tests.

[ScooterinAB]

I said jobs, because it adds to the game without adding made up, untested fan rules.

By extension, I'd like to see more fan-made PACKS. These are just collection and math notes anyways, but I'd like to see some realistic PACKS for basic commlinks (including basic software), SINs and licenses, and some security gear that people might not think of.

I'd also like to see more suggestions for Knowledge skills, complete with specializations. The bit in the rulebook is nice, but it's really only a starting point. I'd like to see Knowledge skills for a variety of "street" activities, as well as more ideas for interest skills, since these really do add to the game. Perhaps this could be included in the Jobs fan supplement (describe available jobs, how the day-to-day duties are affected by the 6th world, and what kinds of skills they would have).

[Marwynn]

Yes, please expand Martial Arts, especially those bows and maybe even crossbows.

[Fatum]

I said jobs, because it adds to the game without adding made up, untested fan rules.

Eh, how do you imagine expanding the quality without adding fan rules?

[ScooterinAB]

Eh, how do you imagine expanding the quality without adding fan rules?

You don't. A great deal of material can be written about various professions in the 6th World without making up new qualities. Example NPC's, lists of common skills, and descriptions of how the 6th World impacts different professions are all possible without creating a single new rule.

The issue I have with fan-made rules is that they are fan-made. They almost always lack the level of playtesting and design foresight that should go into a roleplaying game. Like it or not, any new rule introduced into any game can and probably will upset it. Having a plethora of house rules makes the game hard to follow for players (new and old), since they no longer have access to the whole and complete rules of play. Most such rules also do not mesh well with existing or other fan-made rules, since they were not viewed as a part of the whole design. This is why we have legal discrepancies and problems, and this is why computer software breaks. Additions and changes that are made without studying their affects on other rules always leads to trouble.

The keys here is playtesting and minimal impact. Fan-made rules that have undergone peer review and have been playtested for balance are fine, as long as players know that they have a chance of using the rules if they leave that particular table. For example, a well tested list of additional qualities is fine if the community supports them to even the most minor degree. However, a poorly thought out and untested set of qualities would never be accepted outside of the group who wrote them. Even if not accepted by other groups, properly playtesting rules mitigates the chances of them completely wrecking the game by being to overpowered, underpowered, or just plain irrelevant.

By comparison, alternate rules that do not stay with a character and provide minimal lasting impact on the game are ideal. If, for example, a group came up with an alternate set of Matrix rules where all opposed tests were instead handled as threshold tests, these rules would speed up game play but would otherwise have minimal lasting impact on the game (whereas new qualities have a lasting impact that stay with that character). In order to be adopted, these minimal impact rule additions should be playtested, but the damage is minor if they aren't, since you can just stop using the rule in question. But regardless of playtesting, the point of minimal impact rules is that any change has a butterfly effect of changes that you may not see at first glance. Minimal impact rules have less impact and less chance of blowing up in everyone's face.

I worked in policy development and governance for 2 years. We learned very quickly that if we start changing corporate policies left, right, and centre, it just leads to problems. Instead, we tried to work within our existing policies, only adding or ammending them as a last resort. The only difference between this and rule development is the scope of the policies/rules.

I don't want to come off as a jerk, but I've seen too many games completely destroyed by adding poorly thought out rules. I don't want to see people turning away from Shadowrun because of the quality of fan-made material (which has in the past, in my opinion, been of a fairly high quality when compared to some other games).

[FuelDrop]

While an expansion on Day Jobs, the effects of skillwires and drones on workplaces, and other similar subjects would be fantastic, I'm still voting for a security system supplement. I'd like some guidelines on what kind of security devices are in play where, like what sort of scanners would be pointed at you when you enter your local stuffer shack.

[Fatum]

It's hard to argue that houserules add an additional level of complexity to playing the game, but I feel that in many cases they are absolutely necessary, and Shadowrun RAW has a lot of places that need houserule clutches. If you keep all your rules posted in one place, and point it out to your players regularly, it's a hundred times easier to help them keep up on them than inform a corporation of the policy changes, if only because your gaming group is a hundred times smaller than even a small corporation.

As for fan supplements - yeah, I like tinkering with the crunch side of the games I play. Of course, fan rules can't be tested as thoroughly as the game publishers are supposed to test them, but frankly, with the quality of material CGL is providing recently (think APCs with racing suspensions and unkillable flying tanks), I feel that the gap is becoming less and less significant. I try to pick self-containted subsystems to houserule them so as not to affect the rest of the rules framework, and naturally everything in fan supplements by its very nature is optional and subject to GM approval and modification. Besides, fluff changes can be even more drastic than crunch ones, because they affect the entirety of your perception of the gaming world, and some of the canon fluff is pretty non-obvious, so it's rather easy to contradict it, thus (arguably) considerably lowering the value of the fan work. An obvious example coming to mind would be the cargo zeppelins which canonically are primarily used to haul cargo in the Sixth World; when writing, say, a fan supplement on cargo haulers it'd be easy to go with actual logic and suggest more reasonable options instead.