What is it about 3rd Edition? Options

[Sengir]

Not for lack of trying on my part.

Neither mine, but the fact that proselytizing is necessary shows that even the cheapest price does not guarantee customers. One principal problem is that you have to make people who don't read every RPG forum aware that your stuff exists, which again brings us back to the lack of WoD print products (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


PS: There also is a more official source for EP material http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs

[Cain]

I wouldn't use those figures to determine an exact ranking (or even a rough one), but if Shadowrun is among a field of second-line RPGs, I'd expect those to show up somewhere within the same top 100 list.

The problem is that, even for a site like Amazon, they only rank the products they sell. So, White Wolf wouldn't appear, since they pretty much only sell through their own site. Just going for a quick overview, I only see about a dozen different new games being offered on Amazon, and a lot of used.

A lower price makes the product more appealing to interested parties, if it's sufficiently low even those with just a passing interest might pick up the product "just in case". But it does not generate customers out of thin air. I wouldn't buy the Minecraft book if it was ten cents, because I don't play Minecraft. The EP guys put out their stuff for free, and it's still a rather obscure game most RPGers haven't heard of, let alone have tried.

A higher price will drive away interested buyers, too. As far as I can tell, the Pegasus strategy is to make their product as accessible as possible, and get lots of people interested. I'm honestly not sure what the CGL strategy is, but I suspect it's "wring as much profit as we can out of this line".

The fact is, Pegasus can print a virtually identical book for a much, much lower price. Exactly how they can is a matter of speculation, but since they are, the likely reason is because CGL's book is overpriced.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Neither mine, but the fact that proselytizing is necessary shows that even the cheapest price does not guarantee customers. One principal problem is that you have to make people who don't read every RPG forum aware that your stuff exists, which again brings us back to the lack of WoD print products (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


PS: There also is a more official source for EP material http://robboyle.wordpress.com/eclipse-phase-pdfs

The torrent I'm plugging was also seeded by Rob. Those are his "get them as you need them" links, the torrent I'm seeding is the "fuck it, get 'em all at once and save the difficulty of it" link.

[Sengir]

As far as I can tell, the Pegasus strategy is to make their product as accessible as possible, and get lots of people interested.

But if SR was just a small fish in the pond competing with dozens of others, how would that work?

[SpellBinder]

But if SR was just a small fish in the pond competing with dozens of others, how would that work?

As well a a candle vs. a dozen helicopter spotlights?

[Cain]

But if SR was just a small fish in the pond competing with dozens of others, how would that work?

It works just like any other product competing for market share.

Look, there's a lot of ways to compete. Generally speaking, providing a quality product at a lower price is a recipe for success. Pegasus seems to be following that model, with a corrected core book and a low price.

I'm honestly not sure what the CGL strategy is, but I'd guess they're banking on the willingness of die hard Shadowrun fans paying anything for the new books. Which is not a winning plan, since they're not really attracting new players. With their high price point, and poorly-edited books, not a lot of people are willing to buy in. That includes me: I've yet to spend real money on a SR5 product. I've got a stack of credits, which I use instead.

[Sengir]

It works just like any other product competing for market share.

Look, there's a lot of ways to compete. Generally speaking, providing a quality product at a lower price is a recipe for success.

So, what exactly was the point where I was wrong according to your opinion?

I'm honestly not sure what the CGL strategy is, but I'd guess they're banking on the willingness of die hard Shadowrun fans paying anything for the new books. Which is not a winning plan, since they're not really attracting new players.

Well, according to CGL (which meshes with their previous statement about the percentage of LEs vs. regular books), they sold 15,000 copies, +X. So I guess the brand name still sells, and maybe the high price also sets an expectation of high quality, aka. the Apple effect.


PS: Another thing which I feel should be pointed out, the Buchpreisbindungsgesetz. Book prices here are fixed for the first 18 months, which includes (at least according to the book traders' association, nobody has yet dared to challenge that) PDF releases. In other words, without that price Pegasus would have to sell grossly overpriced PDFs...

[Bertramn]

Damn, the title of this thread summarizes precisely how I have been feeling in the last couple of weeks.

I have been playing Shadowrun since Fourth Edition came out, when I was about 16 years old. It is also the first P&P I ever seriously played, so I am pretty much a SR4-native. Since then I have almost exclusively been GM-ing.
In the last couple of years I have become more and more tired of the rules and mechanics of Shadowrun 4/5, as well as aspects of the setting. I have almost come to hate it for its needless amount of complexity and its appearant need to have a written rule for every circumstance, e.g. "Treading Water" in fifth edition.

A few weeks ago I finally came to the conclusion that I have to substitute the rules system of shadowrun with something else. At first I was thinking about GURPS or Eclipse Phase, the latter of which really impressed me with its setting more than anything else.

On a whim however I checked out Shadowrun 3. Previously I had never taken a look at it, since I had heard everywhere that it was by far the inferior system of the two, but I liked the concept of Dicepools, and since sometimes I have the 'tism going bad for something like this, I made an Excel sheet to compare the two basic dice mechanics. The result of which are these tables:

Chance Per Threshold SR4/5
Chance Per Threshold SR3
Chance Per Dice Amount SR4/5
Chance Per Dice Amount SR3

I was completely flabbergastet at how elegant Shadowrun 3 worked with higher diffliculties and higher amounts of dice, an how crudely Shadowrun 4/5 works in comparison. When you have 5 or 6 dice it comes close to a D100-system in how linear the decrease in success probability is, compared to the success threshold. Truly beautiful!
In my estimates it will make GM-ing far easier when it comes to setting diffliculties for tests.
The graphs explain why I always had my super-specialized player-characters failing in the fields they were best in, because the task was "hard" (Threshold 4). I did not expect that that would lower their chance of success to less than 5% (a 20 on a D20), even with 30 dice at their disposal.

That is because the dice mechanic in Shadowrun 4/5 appears to work much more intuitively than it does in effect. Unexpectedly, the diffliculty increase is exponential. And quickly exponential at that!
This is caused by the fact that Shadowrun 4, unlike nWoD, sets a Threshold. nWoD still only requires one success, as did oWoD and Shadowrun 3.

As it turns out I have found my substitute of choice for Shadowrun, it's Shadowrun.

EDIT: The graph about 4th/5th edition I uploaded is based on bad math. I leave it in this post for context. Further down I uploaded both graphs again, this time the correct ones.

[Stahlseele]

Err, you will quickly notice that one hit is most of the time basically worthless under SR3, so don't be too disappointed there please.
You will need at least one NET HIT to accomlish anything. For example hitting somebody with a Gun. If you only score one hit against your TN and then the other guy scores 1 hit against his TN to evade, you miss.
And that's not the only example. Magic is especially bad here, as you need to keep in mind the dice pool to roll(skill+magic pool), then the force at which you cast the spell(which limits hits barring use of Karma), and then you need to keep track of how many actual hits you had when casting certain spells later on when somebody is trying to resist the spells as well . . 1 Hit on Improved Invisibility CASTING will be worthless as soon as somebody points a camera at you . .

[Bertramn]

Well I know the difference between needing a Success and needing a Net Success of course,
but the fact that the Dice Mechanic of SR4/5 is inept for success tests still stands.

When a guy with 30 dice only accomplishes a hard task in his field 3,7% of the time, that is kind of weird.
And a guy with 4 dice is at 1,23% chance of Success, so basically no difference between godly strong and pathetically weak charakters, when it comes to hard tasks.

EDIT: The percent figures are wrong, sry. I correct it further down.

My point is:
The system with variable Target Numbers allows for a more seamless transition from easy to hard tasks in success tests.

Also the fact that Net Hits are vital, and the fact that you have to keep track of them is true for Shadowrun 4/5 as well.
I am pretty sure though that the enemy needs to spend pool dice to evade the way you are describing, and if he does not have any I will hit with 1 Success.

For a week now I have been fiddling on a highly customized, streamlined and simplified version of Shadowrun 3.
The Vehicle stuff from Shadowrun 3 was too complicated for example, so I inserted the chase-mechanic from the 007-RPG. Some research had indicated that it was greatly simple and simply great, which turns out to be true. It is also surprisingly easy to adapt to Shadowrun, they did so for fifth edition after all, but I preferred to lift it from its original source.
Also I do intend to mix in good mechanics from Shadowrun 5 where I see fit.
So far that has been nowhere, but I have not gotten to the Magic and Matrix chapters yet.
To my surprise the fifth edition decks work similar to the third edition decks, at least at first glance.

[Cain]

So, what exactly was the point where I was wrong according to your opinion?

Well, you seemed to think the fact that Pegasus was selling books for so little was a sign they were doing something wrong. Actually, it's a sign that they're doing something very right, and CGL is doing it wrong.

Well, according to CGL (which meshes with their previous statement about the percentage of LEs vs. regular books), they sold 15,000 copies, +X. So I guess the brand name still sells, and maybe the high price also sets an expectation of high quality, aka. the Apple effect.


PS: Another thing which I feel should be pointed out, the Buchpreisbindungsgesetz. Book prices here are fixed for the first 18 months, which includes (at least according to the book traders' association, nobody has yet dared to challenge that) PDF releases. In other words, without that price Pegasus would have to sell grossly overpriced PDFs...

Interestingly, they only cite numbers for the initial release. That's when book sales are the strongest, they're including prerelease orders and con sales. They also don't provide any useful point of comparison; I'm given to understand that D&D 5e sold hundreds of thousands of copies, both online and at FLGS's. They don't mention how sales went after the initial buzz wore off, so we don't know if they tanked or not.

[SpellBinder]

I can only speak for one [little] local store in my Podunk corner of the world, but they continue to order more D&D5 books and have yet to place even a second order on SR5 core books (and have not ordered any supplement books). Out of those of us there that are into Shadowrun in general, I believe I'm the one with the most SR5 material in total.

[binarywraith]

Damn, the title of this thread summarizes precisely how I have been feeling in the last couple of weeks.

I have been playing Shadowrun since Fourth Edition came out, when I was about 16 years old. It is also the first P&P I ever seriously played, so I am pretty much a SR4-native. Since then I have almost exclusively been GM-ing.
In the last couple of years I have become more and more tired of the rules and mechanics of Shadowrun 4/5, as well as aspects of the setting. I have almost come to hate it for its needless amount of complexity and its appearant need to have a written rule for every circumstance, e.g. "Treading Water" in fifth edition.

A few weeks ago I finally came to the conclusion that I have to substitute the rules system of shadowrun with something else. At first I was thinking about GURPS or Eclipse Phase, the latter of which really impressed me with its setting more than anything else.

On a whim however I checked out Shadowrun 3. Previously I had never taken a look at it, since I had heard everywhere that it was by far the inferior system of the two, but I liked the concept of Dicepools, and since sometimes I have the 'tism going bad for something like this, I made an Excel sheet to compare the two basic dice mechanics. The result of which are these tables:

Chance Per Threshold SR4/5
Chance Per Threshold SR3
Chance Per Dice Amount SR4/5
Chance Per Dice Amount SR3

I was completely flabbergastet at how elegant Shadowrun 3 worked with higher diffliculties and higher amounts of dice, an how crudely Shadowrun 4/5 works in comparison. When you have 5 or 6 dice it comes close to a D100-system in how linear the decrease in success probability is, compared to the success threshold. Truly beautiful!
In my estimates it will make GM-ing far easier when it comes to setting diffliculties for tests.
The graphs explain why I always had my super-specialized player-characters failing in the fields they were best in, because the task was "hard" (Threshold 4). I did not expect that that would lower their chance of success to less than 5% (a 20 on a D20), even with 30 dice at their disposal.

That is because the dice mechanic in Shadowrun 4/5 appears to work much more intuitively than it does in effect. Unexpectedly, the diffliculty increase is exponential. And quickly exponential at that!
This is caused by the fact that Shadowrun 4, unlike nWoD, sets a Threshold. nWoD still only requires one success, as did oWoD and Shadowrun 3.

As it turns out I have found my substitute of choice for Shadowrun, it's Shadowrun.

In my experience, this is entirely the case. It is -very- easy to scale SR3 on the fly solely via target number modifiers.

The vehicle rules though are pretty universally terrible. Killing someone with a vehicle impact is pretty much impossible under SR3 rules. It's just too easy to soak.

[Nath]

Chance Per Threshold SR4/5
Chance Per Threshold SR3
Chance Per Dice Amount SR4/5
Chance Per Dice Amount SR3

There's something wrong in your math I think. A dice pool of 3 achieves 2 hits or more 26% of the time under 4th edition mechanics, and all your numbers beyond that point seems wrong to me.

[Bertramn]

the fact that they seem wrong is exactly my point.
The way the system portrays diffliculty is unintuitive.

I have no idea where you got that figure of 26% from, but my math on the three dice with a threshold of two goes as such:
1/3*1/3+2/3*1/3*1/3=5/27
It comes to a bit under 20%.

[Cain]

In my experience, this is entirely the case. It is -very- easy to scale SR3 on the fly solely via target number modifiers.

The vehicle rules though are pretty universally terrible. Killing someone with a vehicle impact is pretty much impossible under SR3 rules. It's just too easy to soak.

Yeah, I don't think Shadowrun ever had decent vehicle rules.

I mean, 1e basically didn't have any. 2 skated along for a while, but we eventually ended up with the &^%%!! Maneuver Score, which goes down in my book as one of the worse mechanics ever devised. 3rd kept that stupid rule, so 4th was the best-- they were almost functional.

[binarywraith]

I honestly treat vehicle combat as entirely cinematic in my SR3 games, and just give riggers better target numbers.

You honestly can't go wrong in SR4 by generally assuming that a TN4 is average for most anything except shooting and modding it up and down based on the situation.

[Nath]

I have no idea where you got that figure of 26% from, but my math on the three dice with a threshold of two goes as such:
1/3*1/3+2/3*1/3*1/3=5/27
It comes to a bit under 20%.

Three dice can give 216 different combinations, 56 of them containing at least two 5 or 6.

The chances the first and the second dice gives a hit is 1/3*1/3 (with 1/3 giving a third hit on the third dice)
The chances the first dice gives no hit and the second and third does is 2/3*1/3*1/3.
Your count left out the chances the first dice gives a hit, the second doesn't but the third dice does, which is 1/3*2/3*1/3.

(1/3*1/3) + (2/3*1/3*1/3) + (1/3*2/3*1/3) = 1/9 + 2/27 + 2/27 = 7/27 ~ 25,9259...%

[Bertramn]

Three dice can give 216 different combinations, 56 of them containing at least two 5 or 6.

The chances the first and the second dice gives a hit is 1/3*1/3 (with 1/3 giving a third hit on the third dice)
The chances the first dice gives no hit and the second and third does is 2/3*1/3*1/3.
Your count left out the chances the first dice gives a hit, the second doesn't but the third dice does, which is 1/3*2/3*1/3.

(1/3*1/3) + (2/3*1/3*1/3) + (1/3*2/3*1/3) = 1/9 + 2/27 + 2/27 = 7/27 ~ 25,9259...%

Been trying to correct myself for half an hour. Damn mobile!

You are right, I was wrong, thanks!

I will correct my graph in a few hours and upload the corrected version.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

When a guy with 30 dice only accomplishes a hard task in his field 3,7% of the time, that is kind of weird.
And a guy with 4 dice is at 1,23% chance of Success, so basically no difference between godly strong and pathetically weak charakters, when it comes to hard tasks.

Your numbers are very, very wrong if you think that 30 Dice only gives 4+ Successes 3.7% of the time. Average number of Successes will be around 10 with 30 Dice.
The guy with 4 Dice will probably only ever get there about 1.23% of the time, but the guy with 30 Dice will only likely FAIL about 3.7% of the time (probably less often than that even).

[Bertramn]

Your numbers are very, very wrong if you think that 30 Dice only gives
4+ Successes 3.7% of the time. Average number of Successes will be
around 10 with 30 Dice.
The guy with 4 Dice will probably only ever get there about 1.23% of the
time, but the guy with 30 Dice will only likely FAIL about 3.7% of the
time (probably less often than that even).

Yo dude! I just admitted I had made a mistake, and promised to correct it within the day.
Don't kick me while I'm down man. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Yo dude! I just admitted I had made a mistake, and promised to correct it within the day.
Don't kick me while I'm down man. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Ahhh... Sorry. My Mistake. Carry on then... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Bertramn]

Here are the graphs again, this time the Graphs for the 4/5th Edition are corrected.
Thanks again Nath for calling me on my bullshit.
This was harder work than expected. Damn them combinatorics!

Chance of Success per Amount of Dice in 4/5th Edition
Chance of Success per Threshold in 4/5th Edition
Chance of Success per Amount of Dice in 3rd Edition
Chance of Success per Target Number in 3rd Edition

Critics of the success test system in fourth/fifth edition that still stand in my opinion, and that are not around in third:
If you have one die, you wont make a test that is even remotely hard.
The system is incredibly elitist when it comes to high diffliculties, you need a neverending dicepool to even attempt them.
The general capability of a runner is far worse in 4/5th than in 3rd, when his stats are balanced (-> when he is not a min-maxed character).

Other than that:
I always hated the fact that players in Shadowrun 4 and onward, never could just roll dice.
For a basic test which they were not prepared for, they had to:
1. Look up the specific attribute
2. Look up the skill and maybe the specialty.
3. Add all of it together
4. Wait for the GM to apply positive and negative modifiers
5. Total the sum and add/subtract it from their dice pool.
All of this before they could even roll.
For one attack this had to be done three times between both parties, with some math mixed in for flavor.
God I love AD&D in comparison! SR3 too handles it easier, basically you can just roll while your GM thinks about TN for a sec. In SR4 onward you have to wait. This made every test a drag.
I also love the wounding system in SR3, though I am not sure about balancing. It lends a special flavor if you tell the player: "You receive a serious wound.", rather than: "You receive 6 boxes of physical damage.".

[Cain]

I honestly treat vehicle combat as entirely cinematic in my SR3 games, and just give riggers better target numbers.

You honestly can't go wrong in SR4 by generally assuming that a TN4 is average for most anything except shooting and modding it up and down based on the situation.

I also tended to abstract vehicle combat, I usually treated it as a set of opposed rolls. It worked pretty well, and variable TN's made it easy to adjust difficulties. 4.5's vehicle combat had serious issues with that, you couldn't easily adjust for, say, a helicopter chasing a car.

4.5's biggest problem was that it depended entirely on skill. Factors like speed and type (air vs ground, for example) were largely ignored. In fact, excessive speed was actually a penalty. So, if a moped rider had greater skill, he could easily overtake a jet plane.

Or, as an example that really happened: we were in a sports car, trying to escape from some gangers. We were going at the top speed, 300. The gangers bikes were much slower, but since there were more of them, they were able to consistently beat our driver, and stay in close range. So, in order to escape, I had a force 10 spirit use Movement on us.

The GM did some math: 3000 meters/turn was roughly equal to Mach 4.6. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

He simple handwaved our escape, but later, we looked at the rules. First of all, that speed would been a huge penalty to our driver, so he might have had no dice at all. Second, even if we did win the opposed test, we would need to win three times before we could even try. That meant it'd take a minimum of 4 minutes for us to escape. By that time, we could have been halfway to Portland!

[Nath]

Other than that:
I always hated the fact that players in Shadowrun 4 and onward, never could just roll dice.
For a basic test which they were not prepared for, they had to:
1. Look up the specific attribute
2. Look up the skill and maybe the specialty.
3. Add all of it together
4. Wait for the GM to apply positive and negative modifiers
5. Total the sum and add/subtract it from their dice pool.
All of this before they could even roll.
For one attack this had to be done three times between both parties, with some math mixed in for flavor.
God I love AD&D in comparison! SR3 too handles it easier, basically you can just roll while your GM thinks about TN for a sec. In SR4 onward you have to wait. This made every test a drag.

3rd edition (and previous ones) had pools. So the actual steps for some rolls were 1° Look up the skill 2° Look up any of the pools that can apply 3° Decide how many dice from the pools you want to use, before actually rolling. In those case, it was not anyhow shorter than summing up and attribute and a skill.

Pools also led to a situation where different action had completely different range of dice pools. Characters in their area of expertise could throw as little as 6 to 8 dice if that roll involved no pool, and as much as 16 to 18 if it did. So it was impossible to consider a given TN as "easy" or "hard" overall, as it depended on each skill. With the exception of the Intimidation skill (which had a pile of situational modifier available)

The 4th edition has a similar problem, albeit for a different reason, as dice pool inflation didn't apply evenly between skills and attributes. So while from a mechanical standpoint you could assess what easy or hard meant for an unaugmented mundane human (whose dice pool would remain fairly contained within a 1-16 dice range), practically there was a number of skills or tasks for which characters could have much higher dice pools.

The part on waiting on the wait for the GM to provide all the modifier is nonetheless true.