Shadowrun is back. Finally. Options

[silva]

(Cross-posting this from RPGnet as I know some authors and writers lurk around here too, and I would like to hear such a feedback if I were of them)

I would like to give a big, BIG thank you to the folks responsible for 5th edition.

As someone who met Shadowrun through the SNES and Sega Genesis videogames, and had its start on the 2nd edition book, you can wonder how disappointed I was with direction 4th edition went. Dont get me wrong, the 20th anniversary book is beautiful, and its rules a stark improvement of the previous editions, but it totally missed what is, for me, one of the big appeals of the game - its cyberpunk sensibilities. The dirty streets, the urban chaos, the anarchism and "stick it to the man" attitude. 4th was too clean, too shy, and too similar to our own world. It wasnt Shadowrun anymore for me. To the point I went back to my homebrew of 2nd and 3rd editions.

Now though, having stumbled on 5th edition after giving it a pass after hearing some initial criticism, I must confess Im as excited as I was 20 years ago when I had a shining copy of the 2e corebook on my skinny 12 years old hands. I just finished reading it and, while it does have its problems, overall it is, for me, the true successor to my beloved 2nd and 3rd editions. The art, the writing, the layout, everything screams THIS IS CYBERPUNK, LETS STICK IT TO THE MAN! to me (by the way, who had the idea to have a character giving the finger central in the GM screen ? thats awesome (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) ).

Well, thats it. I just wanted to show some love for the folks behind this. I bought the core plus the Alphaware box (Gentry rules, and that NA map is beautiful), the GM screen (oh that finger ) and Run Faster (thank god someone came up with the gear packs idea! ). Dont know if Ill get Run&Gun and Grimoire, as I aint much interested in their subjects, but Im looking forward to the announced Seattle Box set, and perhaps the Matrix book (not because the subject interests me more than the othes, but because I found the Matrix chapter the more.. confusing, of the core book, both from a writing and rules perspective).

If someone else wants to share the love for the return of Shaodwrun, be my guest.

[Smash]

I felt the same way, although I still think the rules and the document structure have a long way to go.

However, given the nature of this post I'm going to guess you haven't been coming here much. There's a lot of hate for 5th here from the realism purists who just can't understand that games don't have to mirror realism.

Anyway, glad someone else likes it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[DeathStrobe]

I really like SR5 too. But Dumpshock is not the best place to talk of your love of SR5. Many here prefer SR4 and despite its array of problems, they still think its the better system.

[mrslamm0]

It's nice to see a post like this I too enjoy 5th ed more then any of the past versions. Yeah 4th was a nice step but the current version feels right to me despite the editing issues and a few problem mechanics. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Glyph]

Visually, SR5 is a treat. Editing-wise, it has a lot of serious problems. I am surprised by how many SR3 purists seem to like it. While it has some retro features that might appeal to the grognards (cyberdecks, etc.), it still has the SR4 mechanics as the core of its rules. And the "everything is wireless now" is pushed even further, with deckers able to hack into cyberware and permanently disable it. Overall, SR5 is a very mixed bag to me.


In keeping with the spirit of this thread, though, I will focus on the positive. Some of the muddled areas of SR4 got cleared up - things like Edge and the regeneration power are similar to the previous edition, but laid out much more clearly.

Skills go up to 12, now, which I like. SR4's skill ratings were too truncated to really show the full breadth of skills, with differences of a single die representing large gulfs of skill. Skills and skill groups have been revised - climbing has been folded into gymnastics, which also subsumes dodging (which is no longer a separate skill), locksmith is used for bypassing MagLocks rather than hardware, and most skill groups are just three skills now. Social skills still use SR4's unwieldy rules, but the fluff is better, implying that social skills should not be used for PC vs. PC interactions, and that they are not mind control.

Initiative is better, because initiative passes are tied to the initiative score again, rather than being a flat number that you get even if your initiative is low (SR4). Magic-wise, mystic adepts are a lot more viable. Adepts have more options, too - mentor spirits all have separate adept advantages now, and you can get qi foci, which effectively give you extra power points (or fractions thereof).

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I felt the same way, although I still think the rules and the document structure have a long way to go.

However, given the nature of this post I'm going to guess you haven't been coming here much. There's a lot of hate for 5th here from the realism purists who just can't understand that games don't have to mirror realism.

Anyway, glad someone else likes it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Not about the Realism (come on, you got magic and Dragons with Machine Guns already)... it is about the Verisimilitude. If the game breaks Verisimilitude, nothing else can save it...

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I really like SR5 too. But Dumpshock is not the best place to talk of your love of SR5. Many here prefer SR4 and despite its array of problems, they still think its the better system.

Probably because it is... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
SR5 has a few things that I like... But not enough for me to abandon 4th Edition. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[SpellBinder]

Probably because it is... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
SR5 has a few things that I like... But not enough for me to abandon 4th Edition. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

+1

[binarywraith]

I really like SR5 too. But Dumpshock is not the best place to talk of your love of SR5. Many here prefer SR4 and despite its array of problems, they still think its the better system.

Nothing wrong with loving SR5. It has some serious warts production quality wise and some baffling rules decisions, but is a lot more like the Shadowrun I know and love than 4e ever was. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Visually, SR5 is a treat. Editing-wise, it has a lot of serious problems. I am surprised by how many SR3 purists seem to like it. While it has some retro features that might appeal to the grognards (cyberdecks, etc.), it still has the SR4 mechanics as the core of its rules. And the "everything is wireless now" is pushed even further, with deckers able to hack into cyberware and permanently disable it. Overall, SR5 is a very mixed bag to me.

I'm fairly sure that most of the 'grognards' like myself just houserule wireless to a greater or lesser extent depending on what suits our players. As written, it's a mess. At my table (when I'm not running Missions and thus stuck with RAW) I frankly excise everything to do with cyberware hacking because it's a mechanic that's not fun for anyone.

[Sengir]

the writing, the layout, everything screams THIS IS CYBERPUNK, LETS STICK IT TO THE MAN! to me

For writing and layout to scream that to me it would have to look like some 80's fanzine, and I don't think it's that bad (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Rad]

Personally, I've never understood the attitude that 4th edition somehow came with a mandatory Black Trenchcoat. Sure, you can play it that way, but you can also play it any other way you liked--including as a bunch of scruffy neo-anarchists sticking it to the man. In fact, that's exactly how my group played it during my first foray into 4th ed. We stuck it to the man with a fragging bulldozer, took the man's military-grade jet copter, slapped a pair of mechanical arms on it and named it the Outlaw Star.

The edition doesn't determine the playstyle. Hell, you could play SR as a fragging superhero game if you felt like it. SR5 might feel a little more familiar to those of us from the Nintendo generation because of the tech downgrade, but ditching nanotech and making hackers carry decks again doesn't make the game more old school. I'd rather they had just wound the timeline back and ditched wireless if they wanted to make it more like the old days. Suddenly going "this stuff doesn't work anymore because reasons" is lazy writing and breaks the living hell out of the suspension of disbelief. Technology doesn't move backwards like that. In fact, the entire book reads like it was cobbled together from a bunch of random notions that no one bothered to flesh out or integrate into a workable whole. (For example, the glitch rules that look like they were written by two different people, resulting in a regular glitch being worse than a critical glitch.)

That's what I don't like about 5th edition, and what I think a lot of other people didn't like about it as well. I do agree that the fiction blurbs were really good, and really captured that punky, street-level, feel that I've always liked, but SR5 wasn't a short fiction compilation, it was a rulebook--and the rules kind of suck. That isn't to say that other editions don't have their share of problems (don't even get me started on SR4's vehicle or scatter rules) but they never struck me as being so completely dysfunctional as 5th ed.

[binarywraith]

I disagree strongly.

If you actually run the 4e setting by the book, it does demand a certain amount of black trenchcoat simply because of the existence of a wireless security panopticon. There honestly isn't any such thing as a grey area where anonymous criminals can lurk and do their thing without them putting in an exceptional amount of effort to create one and maintain that anonymity.

That said the reason that even the writers who post around here have admitted to for the SR5 rules being bipolar is that they were, in fact, in a lot of places written by multiple people who weren't communicating with each other. Followed by the editorial team not so much dropping the ball as loading it into a cannon and firing it into the sun when it came time to proof everything and get it ready for publication.

[Glyph]

The only way Shadowrun can really work, from SR4 onwards, is if you combine data balkanization, an overwhelming glut of that data, and the unreliability of that data (which can be forged, altered, replaced, etc.), along with a crumbling social order and widespread crime and lawlessness.

This goes for SR5, too, though. They have made wireless even more ubiquitous, and with overwatch score, Big Brother is so everpresent that even master hackers have to nip in and out of the system as quickly as they can.

[silva]

Reading SR5, I get a strong feel that the corps won, and that explains the ubiquitous and mandatory wireless. So in a way its not intended to be a plausible extrapolation of such a technology on a future date, but instead a consequence of the megacorps total monopoly over the means of communication. I concede though, that the specifics feel poorly thought-out. But then my group dont use to care much for specifics. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

And Rad: I find the "pink mohawk" in SR5 is more expressed through intangibles like aesthetics, writing, tone, etc. than actual rules.

[Rad]

I disagree strongly.

If you actually run the 4e setting by the book, it does demand a certain amount of black trenchcoat simply because of the existence of a wireless security panopticon. There honestly isn't any such thing as a grey area where anonymous criminals can lurk and do their thing without them putting in an exceptional amount of effort to create one and maintain that anonymity.

Likewise. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

That panopticon you're talking about was never flawless or ubiquitous. Sure, if you set your game in Manhattan you're gonna' need to worry about licenses and surveillance a lot more--but over in Redmond barrens rats still scurry about doing business as usual. Meanwhile in L.A., there isn't so much a grey area as a blinding multicolored strobe light.

Also, don't mistake attitude for competence, or the lack thereof. Sometimes "sticking it to the man" means pulling off a righteous hack and then ghosting out without leaving a trace.

And Rad: I find the "pink mohawk" in SR5 is more expressed through intangibles like aesthetics, writing, tone, etc. than actual rules.

And that's the thing: those intangibles don't determine how your group chooses to play the game. 4th ed may have put more of a spotlight on the trenchcoat method with it's fiction and whatnot, and some of the rules did add new challenges and risks to consider--but it never demanded that people stop playing the game in whatever way they wanted to play it. After all, what kind of runner lets a rule book tell them how to have fun?

Shadowrun isn't "back," it never left.

[binarywraith]

The only way Shadowrun can really work, from SR4 onwards, is if you combine data balkanization, an overwhelming glut of that data, and the unreliability of that data (which can be forged, altered, replaced, etc.), along with a crumbling social order and widespread crime and lawlessness.

This goes for SR5, too, though. They have made wireless even more ubiquitous, and with overwatch score, Big Brother is so everpresent that even master hackers have to nip in and out of the system as quickly as they can.

Yeah, that's one of the parts of SR5 I like least, given that the Matrix has crashed repeatedly now and the infrastructure should be a hodge-podge of fiber optics, copper, and wireless transmitters from the last forty years of rapid and radical realignment. It's not like the UCAS government's been building infrastructure, after all, most of it is corp owned and built. I think I'm going to set my next campaign somewhere other than Seattle, just to get to someplace where the neo-anarchists are still a thing and the corps haven't obviously won.

[Blade]

Shadowrun isn't "back," it never left.

Shadowrun was in your heart all along!

But seriously, I agree with this. The tone and aesthetics of SR5 lean more towards the pink mohawk cyberpunk, but for me the only thing that prevented me from doing the same thing in SR4 than I did in SR2 was just that I was older and realized how little of what we did in SR2 could make sense unless the world obeyed to Hollywood logic and rule of cool.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Personally, I've never understood the attitude that 4th edition somehow came with a mandatory Black Trenchcoat. Sure, you can play it that way, but you can also play it any other way you liked--including as a bunch of scruffy neo-anarchists sticking it to the man. In fact, that's exactly how my group played it during my first foray into 4th ed. We stuck it to the man with a fragging bulldozer, took the man's military-grade jet copter, slapped a pair of mechanical arms on it and named it the Outlaw Star.

The edition doesn't determine the playstyle. Hell, you could play SR as a fragging superhero game if you felt like it. SR5 might feel a little more familiar to those of us from the Nintendo generation because of the tech downgrade, but ditching nanotech and making hackers carry decks again doesn't make the game more old school. I'd rather they had just wound the timeline back and ditched wireless if they wanted to make it more like the old days. Suddenly going "this stuff doesn't work anymore because reasons" is lazy writing and breaks the living hell out of the suspension of disbelief. Technology doesn't move backwards like that. In fact, the entire book reads like it was cobbled together from a bunch of random notions that no one bothered to flesh out or integrate into a workable whole. (For example, the glitch rules that look like they were written by two different people, resulting in a regular glitch being worse than a critical glitch.)

That's what I don't like about 5th edition, and what I think a lot of other people didn't like about it as well. I do agree that the fiction blurbs were really good, and really captured that punky, street-level, feel that I've always liked, but SR5 wasn't a short fiction compilation, it was a rulebook--and the rules kind of suck. That isn't to say that other editions don't have their share of problems (don't even get me started on SR4's vehicle or scatter rules) but they never struck me as being so completely dysfunctional as 5th ed.

Indeed... We have had both Black Trenchcoats and Pink Mohawks in SR4/SR4A... Sometimes even mixed in together. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[silva]

Indeed... We have had both Black Trenchcoats and Pink Mohawks in SR4/SR4A... Sometimes even mixed in together.

YOU had, not the books. Thats my point.

While we are free to imagine and create anything we like at our tables, each game suggests, and inspires, certain gameplay directions by itself, be it through art, rules, writing, fiction, etc. This is something Shadowrun always had in spades - its rules were always a mess, but a pretty flavourful mess at that. The same goes for the art, which, while somewhat silly in parts, is totally evocative of the exotic fusion of wildly disparate elements the game setting proposes: gibsonian cyberpunk, tolkienesque fantasy, amerindian and meso-american folklores, neo-anarchism, etc. All these elemets fused into a unique blend that was recognizably Shadowrun. It was not just another cyber-fantasy game, no, it was SHADOWRUN. Damn, just look at the old Laubenstein logo and you will see what I mean. Like art students say: "Its not what you do, but how you do it", and Shadowrun imagery was always a damn great example of this.

The problem with 4th edition is that it simply lost all that. Its portrayal of the future feels bland. By downplaying most of the elements that formed that unique identity of previous editions, it ended up feeling like another generic cyber-fantasy setting. In doing so, it lost all its magic for me. Because, frankly, Shadowrun was never about the rules, it was about the setting, the premise, the attittude, the thrill. And 4th edition with its sobriety, realism, and professionalism simply missed the point. It missed the soul of Shadowrun. Thats where 5th edition come in, for me ( and for a lot of people out there, it seems): They got the only good thing from 4th edition, its streamlined rules, and fused it with that old and awesome unique aesthetical identity of days past. This means I dont need to use my homebrew of "3e setting+4th rules" anymore, because I have a new edition that does that by default. And this is awesome. Even with half-baked wireless, even with proofreading issues. This is awesome because I prefer a true Shadowrun with flaws over a generic cyber-fantasy game thats perfect.


TL;DR: 4th edition is not Shadowrun. ( (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

YOU had, not the books. Thats my point.

While we are free to imagine and create anything we like at our tables, each game suggests, and inspires, certain gameplay directions by itself, be it through art, rules, writing, fiction, etc. This is something Shadowrun always had in spades - its rules were always a mess, but a pretty flavourful mess at that. The same goes for the art, which, while somewhat silly in parts, is totally evocative of the exotic fusion of wildly disparate elements the game setting proposes: gibsonian cyberpunk, tolkienesque fantasy, amerindian and meso-american folklores, neo-anarchism, etc. All these elemets fused into a unique blend that was recognizably Shadowrun. It was not just another cyber-fantasy game, no, it was SHADOWRUN. Damn, just look at the old Laubenstein logo and you will see what I mean. Like art students say: "Its not what you do, but how you do it", and Shadowrun imagery was always a damn great example of this.

The problem with 4th edition is that it simply lost all that. Its portrayal of the future feels bland. By downplaying most of the elements that formed that unique identity of previous editions, it ended up feeling like another generic cyber-fantasy setting. In doing so, it lost all its magic for me. Because, frankly, Shadowrun was never about the rules, it was about the setting, the premise, the attittude, the thrill. And 4th edition with its sobriety, realism, and professionalism simply missed the point. It missed the soul of Shadowrun. Thats where 5th edition come in, for me ( and for a lot of people out there, it seems): They got the only good thing from 4th edition, its streamlined rules, and fused it with that old and awesome unique aesthetical identity of days past. This means I dont need to use my homebrew of "3e setting+4th rules" anymore, because I have a new edition that does that by default. And this is awesome. Even with half-baked wireless, even with proofreading issues. This is awesome because I prefer a true Shadowrun with flaws over a generic cyber-fantasy game thats perfect.


TL;DR: 4th edition is not Shadowrun. ( (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

Opinions Vary... I Do Not Share Yours. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Smash]

YOU had, not the books. Thats my point.

While we are free to imagine and create anything we like at our tables, each game suggests, and inspires, certain gameplay directions by itself, be it through art, rules, writing, fiction, etc. This is something Shadowrun always had in spades - its rules were always a mess, but a pretty flavourful mess at that. The same goes for the art, which, while somewhat silly in parts, is totally evocative of the exotic fusion of wildly disparate elements the game setting proposes: gibsonian cyberpunk, tolkienesque fantasy, amerindian and meso-american folklores, neo-anarchism, etc. All these elemets fused into a unique blend that was recognizably Shadowrun. It was not just another cyber-fantasy game, no, it was SHADOWRUN. Damn, just look at the old Laubenstein logo and you will see what I mean. Like art students say: "Its not what you do, but how you do it", and Shadowrun imagery was always a damn great example of this.

The problem with 4th edition is that it simply lost all that. Its portrayal of the future feels bland. By downplaying most of the elements that formed that unique identity of previous editions, it ended up feeling like another generic cyber-fantasy setting. In doing so, it lost all its magic for me. Because, frankly, Shadowrun was never about the rules, it was about the setting, the premise, the attittude, the thrill. And 4th edition with its sobriety, realism, and professionalism simply missed the point. It missed the soul of Shadowrun. Thats where 5th edition come in, for me ( and for a lot of people out there, it seems): They got the only good thing from 4th edition, its streamlined rules, and fused it with that old and awesome unique aesthetical identity of days past. This means I dont need to use my homebrew of "3e setting+4th rules" anymore, because I have a new edition that does that by default. And this is awesome. Even with half-baked wireless, even with proofreading issues. This is awesome because I prefer a true Shadowrun with flaws over a generic cyber-fantasy game thats perfect.


TL;DR: 4th edition is not Shadowrun. ( (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

Agreed

[Glyph]

If you find SR4 bland, I find SR5 tedious. I wanted to like it. But their design philosophy was atrocious. "Everything has a price". Well guess what, everything already does have a price - any option you pick has an opportunity cost. And the ironic thing is that, solely based on that (opportunity costs), it is a pretty balanced game. I did all the "how much can you get for this" builds for things like getting 12 power points and what have you. And usually, my attitude was "Okay, this is nice, but I would rather have a bit less of that, and a bit more of this other thing, or round out this dude a bit more so he doesn't have as many weaknesses".

Unfortunately, they went further, and did two things wrong. First, they tended to assume that anything that was a good option in SR4 needed to be hammered with the nerf bat, often to the point where it made that option all but useless/unusable (who would take the senstitive system flaw now?). Secondly, and even worse, they tried to balance out everything cool in the game by giving it an annoying drawback or sucky penalty.

Gimped cyberware that you can only use at full functionality by making yourself idiotically vulnerable to an attack from an unseen vector that can maim you. Background counts that can easily go up to 6 or so for comparatively normal stuff (and higher than that for special areas), turning your adepts into instant mundanes. An overwatch score that hangs over the decker like the sword of Damocles. Limits which make you throw away hits from a good dice roll. Spirits that refuse to do anything because what you ask them to do doesn't fall into the spell category associated with them by your tradition. Nope, that air elemental can't find someone, you're Shinto, so it's a combat spirit.

Like I said in the other thread, in SR3 or SR4, you can just play your character.

[safetypin]

So, this might not be the best place to ask, but since it's here, I'll ask, and I'll ask in a different place if that would be better.

I'm working on reviving the Shadowland community, and building a new system for play-by-post. Which edition would get the widest support?

The thing is, the system won't be like the computer game, it's not going to actually implement rules, just provide a specialized interface to allow more streamlined play (like configurable dice rolls being integrated into comments). That will be the responsibility of the players. But, in order to have a public play area, like a MUD, I have to decide on a ruleset for the public area (would probably be revisited and determined by community support when/if they release a 6th edition or revise the 5th), and players who want to play by alternate rulesets can play in a "private" area by whatever rules they want.

[nezumi]

For an online game? I would probably have to go 4th (and this is an SR3 fanboy speaking). SR2/3 offers a level of granularity that's difficult to simulate in a game (since it requires so much player choice). SR4 is far more straightforward.

Although frankly, I would consider something else altogether. These games are written for people to be able to play at a table quickly without a calculator. A computer IS the calculator, but it's not friendly to a certain level of player involvement (see SR2/3, above). None of the Shadowrun games used the same mechanics as the tabletop games. I'm not sure why you would hold yourself to it.

[Glyph]

If you are talking about the widest support here, I would say SR4, not that there aren't a lot of people who stuck with SR3, or embraced the new edition, too, but overall SR4 seems to be the default for the Dumpshock forums.

If you are looking to recruit from the "official" forums, though, they tend to be newer players, and tend to have adopted SR5, it seems.