 Street Magic, So much for one book's enough :( |
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 Apr 30 2005, 01:22 AM
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#76
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Dragon  Group: Members Posts: 4,718 Joined: 14-September 02 Member No.: 3,263  |
Smart and imaginative people are always a problem. That's why when a revolution starts they are first up against wall. :dead: |
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Apr 30 2005, 01:29 AM
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#77
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Canon Companion Group: Members Posts: 8,021 Joined: 2-March 03 From: The Morgue, Singapore LTG Member No.: 4,187 |
Really smart and imaginative people will convince you to line up against the wall and do the shooting. :D |
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Apr 30 2005, 01:30 AM
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#78
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
i think there are two distinct trends which are being painted with the same brush, here. one trend is min-maxing. min-maxing is okay. it just means you're making a character that's good at what he or she does. excessive min-maxing can be problematic, and the problem there stems from the player.
the other trend is exploiting--finding a chink in the rules that allows your character to become unbalancingly good. an example of this in SR3 might be the Validate program and the Validate Account operation. validating an account is an incredibly exploitable activity in SR3, if you know how to use it. the power it can grant a player is far, far out of whack with the difficulty there is in achieving it. a better example of exploitation would be building an insanely good firearm using the CCFCG. conceal 6, 8M, FA, 10 points of RC--yeah, exploit. sure, the GM can use GM fiat to ban such a weapon from their game--but the GM can use GM fiat for anything. the need for a GM to use that power should not come up almost every time a certain rule is used. exploiting is not a player problem, it's a system problem. |
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Apr 30 2005, 01:43 AM
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#79
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,718 Joined: 14-September 02 Member No.: 3,263 |
I'm with you mfb on min-maxing vs. exploit. It isn't a mortal sin in my books either. It might be asthetically unpleasing in some ways, but not the end of the world.
I do disagree on the matter of the CCFCG The fact that is so easy to explicit isn't so much a problem as a design tradeoff. It says right up front that the system is exploitable, and put up big, flashing warning signs around itself. That's different than the Validate issue, which appears simply to be an oversight. |
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Apr 30 2005, 03:17 AM
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#80
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Decker on the Threshold Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,922 Joined: 14-March 04 Member No.: 6,156 |
This idea, of being able to buy magic by points and even after chargen I like. I don't, hewever, like the idea of "package deals" for magic, as that just punishes the player who wants to gradually pick up his magic, unless you have the last bits of the package come all at once or something which makes even less sense. IMO a point-by-point system, if it ever is made to exist, should be designed so that it is seamless with the current rules. If you buy six points of magic for 30 build points then you shouldn't have to resort to special packages to get the same things you get under the current rules. |
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May 3 2005, 02:38 PM
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#81
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Target Group: Members Posts: 84 Joined: 15-April 03 From: My own personal purgatory Member No.: 4,453 |
This needs to be repeated. I have no problem with additional books for the purposes of "Hey, here's some neat toys and tricks for a character who's specialized in _____", but it's annoying to be told "Hey, you want to play a character who's specialized in ______? Then you need book _____ in order to be at all effective." It's like if standard D&D had a Paladin class that was mechanically described as "A good guy with mounted combat skills", and you had to buy another book to find the rules for paladins spellcasting, turning undead, and summoning their magical horses. |
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May 3 2005, 02:52 PM
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#82
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy.
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May 3 2005, 03:19 PM
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#83
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Decker on the Threshold Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,922 Joined: 14-March 04 Member No.: 6,156 |
D&D is not the game you want to be comparing to in terms of supplemental books adding power-creep, or for making certain classes unplayable before the supplements. Have you even seen some of the insanity in those "Complete X" books, let alone the Eberron or FR campaign setting books? Before Complete Warrior noone would even consider playing a straight fighter after level 4 (baring certain racial substitution levels, but those are also in different books); afterward with all the feat-intensive Tactical Feats you actually can, and make a fairly decent chain-tripper build at that (though it's still better with a few levels of Exotic Weapons Master and such, etc). After Complete Arcane and Complete Adventurer you'd be a fool to make a straight Bard-20; Sublime Chord and Seeker of the Song are so much more powerful it's not even funny. Many multiclass characters are suddenly made viable with certain feats in Complete Adventurer, and Complete Divine makes clerics so insanely broken with Divine Metamagic and Persistant Spell it's not even funny. So yeah, let's not bring that Other Game into this, hmm? :) |
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May 3 2005, 05:00 PM
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#84
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,078 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 67 |
Briefly back to the topic of the totems, my problem isn't that all this odd totems exist, it's that the totems are not properly weighted. Totems are presented in SR as little more than stat boxes, where Bear and Prairie Dog have about equal presentation, despite the former having immense socio-historical momentum and the latter being basically non-existent, mythologically. Magic is very personal in Shadowrun, in that you can believe in whatever you want and your magic will basically function. But in terms of what appears in the word count of books, I'd prefer to see the weight behind the material that has some sort of signficant impact on the world.
That's why I really liked Synner's stuff on the Old World hermetic traditions in SOTA64. You got a real sense of the social and historical weight behind certain strains of hermeticism in the world (specifically, but not limited to, Europe). An equivalent does not really exist for shamanism, especially North American shamanism, in the material, which waters down the importance of some totems, medicine societies, and lodges when put next to really random totem ideas. |
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May 3 2005, 05:08 PM
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#85
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Decker on the Threshold Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,922 Joined: 14-March 04 Member No.: 6,156 |
That's a good point. Honestly instead of all the pages and pages spent on new totems and such like in MitS I'd have liked to see more pages explainning how certain tetems like Bear and Coyote end up being so ubiquitous--seemingly because the ideals represented by the totem are so central to a particular culture--with maybe a couple of pages at the end dedicated to creating your own "personal" totems for those who want to break the mold.
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May 3 2005, 10:37 PM
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#86
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Tilting at Windmills Group: Members Posts: 1,636 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Amarillo, TX, CAS Member No.: 388 |
Yeah, but you gotta remember that we're lemmings, AH. *makes lemming noises* |
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May 3 2005, 10:34 PM
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#87
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
You know what I remember, Padraig? I remember Nigel D. Findley left on his lonesome one article fleshing out totems and ending up with a chipmunk totem.
Also, I remember how in many villages they left a lot open for the devil. Except they rarely called it Satan's Lot, because naming him could invoke him. So often they called it Goodman's Lot. Yeah, that's what I remember. :twirl: |
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May 3 2005, 10:48 PM
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#88
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,754 Joined: 9-July 04 From: Modesto, CA Member No.: 6,465 |
Bleh. "Advanced magic" for who? Considering the large base of existing players, you'd think they'd include this shit in the core system, and for that matter, core SR4 better not have a fuck-ton of fluff. I've got 3 other versions of SR (hardcover and soft) full of fluff already. I suppose they are hoping to hedge all the bitching by releasing it as the first supplement after SR4, but it's still very lame IMO. This reminds me of how some of the MMOG's (Everquest for this example) include new game options and functions, but only if you buy additional expansions. Than means if you don't buy their "Legacy of Yekesa" expansion, you don't get the cool automapper, even if you buy additional expansions "beyond" the one the option was released in. Let me take a shot at all of Fanpro's new SR products and supplements coming soon: SR4 core "Advanced" magic ...bleh "The good" cyberware ...bleh hack/rigg(er) ...bleh book 'o guns ...bleh ... hacker 2.0! ...inevitable. /rant off. |
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May 3 2005, 11:29 PM
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#89
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
given the massive revamp, i'd be surprised if some of the SR3's "advanced" rules don't magically turn into "basic" rules in SR4.
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May 3 2005, 11:44 PM
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#90
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,754 Joined: 9-July 04 From: Modesto, CA Member No.: 6,465 |
...I was hoping for that too, but it sounds like they are setting up the suppliments similar to previous versions, so aside from a general conversion from SR3, I doubt we'll see much (if any) big magical categories added to Core SR4 Magic. Looks like no initiation or enchanting in Core and those cover alot of ground. |
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May 3 2005, 11:49 PM
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#91
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Tilting at Windmills Group: Members Posts: 1,636 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Amarillo, TX, CAS Member No.: 388 |
So you're saying I really AM Satan? That's not just an epithet that gets thrown at me on occasion by my players? Wow. You just made their lives harder, didn't ya, chummer? :evil: |
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May 3 2005, 11:51 PM
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#92
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 6,748 Joined: 5-July 02 Member No.: 2,935 |
I'm sure they look at it as a challenge. Or a dry run for later on, at least. :]
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May 4 2005, 12:00 AM
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#93
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Prime Runner Group: Retired Admins Posts: 3,929 Joined: 26-February 02 From: .ca Member No.: 51 |
If there's one complaint I don't hear about SR3 often, it's that it has "too much fluff" ...
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May 4 2005, 12:04 AM
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#94
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Guests |
Ha! You might want to have a discussion with the Dictator Tot before you assume that anyone thinks you are the devil. I mean, hell, he went to law school, which should automatically bump him way up on the hierarchy of evil.
Like what? |
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May 4 2005, 01:42 AM
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#95
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,032 Joined: 6-August 04 Member No.: 6,543 |
Yes, becuase no one new would ever want to get into SR. Look, I can take my basic shadowrun book, let some read the fluff out of the book and then teach them how to play shadowrun. All in one book. I can run a game out of it. The other game, has no fluff,and needs at least three book to even run the game.Then you need to look for fluff. So what if you don't have all the cyberware,magic and rigging shit in one book. You at least can take one book and run a game from it. Yes, you will have slight problems when latter books come out and you find out that they printed a btter or diffrent piece of cyberware,or what not. They do that in jsut about evry game I know. They do that way more so in the game that will not be named. |
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May 4 2005, 03:36 AM
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#96
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Shooting Target Group: Members Posts: 1,978 Joined: 26-February 02 From: New Jersey, USA Member No.: 500 |
Can I make a request?
Can we finish off the conversion from SR3 to SR4 (ie, release all the damned rulebooks) in UNDER a year? |
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May 4 2005, 04:20 AM
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#97
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Financial Adept Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 76 Joined: 4-October 03 From: Western NY Member No.: 5,682 |
I play shadowrun maybe twice a year if I'm lucky, yet I purchase almost every SR book. Why? Fluff, its THE best part of the game imho. |
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May 4 2005, 04:26 AM
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#98
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
I think the main complaint is that all the rules and the fluff are widely distributed across a boatload of sourcebooks, and that folks would rather have as much of the rules as possible condensed into a couple of books, and the fluff moved to other books. Ideally, one would only have to have SR3 for the rules and another setting book for the city the runners are going to be running in.
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May 4 2005, 04:43 AM
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#99
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Target Group: Members Posts: 81 Joined: 12-April 02 From: the shadows.... Member No.: 2,548 |
While that may sound like a great idea, the real problem (aside from production schedules) is that if a company releases too many books too quickly they will essentually be competing with themselves for the customers' dollars. Better (for the company) to release books a couple of months apart so that those who buy them don't have to choose which one to buy. Also I'd rather see a well developed book every 4 to 6 months than a bunch of crap every month.... |
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May 4 2005, 04:50 AM
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#100
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
Erm, I think everyone would want that. Not much of a decision there, the way that you phrased it. :) |
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