SR4, A joke right? Options

[Kagetenshi]

[Eldritch]

Crap. I read that but it didn't sink in till just now.


O woe is us.

Would someone like to start planning the funeral?

[Req]

I will wait and see (not like there are any other options, of course). Seems to me that the Matrix is direly in need of a revamp, and this whole Wireless Matrix thingie might be awesome, or it might be crrrrrap. I don't want to see this game start looking like CyberGeneration, and I've got great hopes for it, but only time will tell.

If the attempt is to dumb down the game, broaden our niche market (and let me go on record as saying I like our niche market), etc etc, then I'm afraid no good will come of this. But if they pull off the nigh-impossible and streamline the system without dumbing-down the system, and keep the game I love intact, well then they can have my $25 gladly.

[Aristotle]

[mfb]

actually? yes, third edition is broke. the tech rules actively repulse most players and are wholly incompatible, the firearm creation rules are hilarious, the melee rules are inconsistent, the rules for sneaking just plain suck, and even the magic rules require minor tweakage.

[Echo]

I wonder what Roxy is doing now... :dead:

[Eyeless Blond]

Honestly, all you oldsters whining about how SR4 is going to suck are missing an important issue here: there is a gigantic amount of rules-bloat in the current iteration of SR3. Most of you who've been around for five or six years hardly even noticed how much it's creeped up on you, but even when I first started reading the SR books (two weeks before the join date listed to the left, btw) I remember being so completely lost in the flood of rules and supplemental rulebooks that I had no idea where to start assimilating it all. I thank my lucky stars I was born with an unusual ability to assimilate and process data, or it would have taken me far longer than a month to go through just the books I was lent to read through. Some of the rules, like everything to do with riggers and vehicles, I still haven't read, years later, and don't expect to ever read because my brain gags just looking at them.

These days, with the SOTA books, SSG, and all the setting books, not to mention two *more* years of background history, there's such a myriad of rules, scattered across so many books, that it's basically impossible for a new player to get him/herself oriented, let alone familiar, with the rules in a reasonable amount of time. Personally I welcome an edition change precisely because it'll strip away some of the rules and let everyone--veterans and newbies--start over again from the same page.

[Req]

[Prospero]

I've been here and hour and haven't commented yet. I guess it's just sinking in, finally. I stopped by this morning before work and noticed that thread with the SR4 pic in the main area and thought it was a joke. Lo and behold... :eek:

Well, I have to agree with Kagetenshi and say I am guardely pessimistic. SR3 has problems, yes. It has a fair amount of them, yes. But will SR 4 not have problems? No. It will have problems. And, while I welcome new, better thought-out rules, I really, really don't want to have to buy all the supplemental books again (speaking as someone who's bought just about all of the supplemental books since SR1...).

OTOH, if I end up starting a new SR game in a few weeks with one experienced and three newbie players, the prospect of having a new, simpler rules system a few months down the road might hearten them. Who knows?

Also, I was pretty pessimistic about SR3 when that came out and I ended up liking that pretty well, so... maybe.

*crossing my fingers and knocking on wood*

[mintcar]

There is plenty wrong with the 3:rd edition. I have fought for a decade to understand all the rules and I still have problems getting everything to work properly, from magic to rigging to decking and everything. I love the game. I love the rules of the game, they´re cool. But if I didn´t love it so, I wouldn´t have given it so much damn work just to be able to play it properly. The rules are among the best there is, but only after you know them and they NEED to be simpler to understand. I hope they don´t ruin the things we love about them though.

Furthermore. Shadowrun has a lot of more or less outdated concepts from the eighties that have been hard to shake off. They are going to do that with this new edition. My guess is that they are going to make the new matrix into something similar to the movie. Now, even though you may think that´s a bad idea, who wouldn´t want to see a matrix that we can at least visualize? I can´t make out from the books what it´s supposed to be as it is, but some of the threads on dump shock gave me some ideas. I think it´s good their doing this. Remember that Shadowrun has NEVER before had this big a change. If this is done good, it´s going to be very exciting to say the least.

[Eyeless Blond]

[Prospero]

[mfb]

EB: indeed.

this is definitely a bigger change than previous editions. the tech leap and the timeline advancement alone make it bigger.

[Eldritch]

[mfb]

you're one of the few, then.

[Kagetenshi]

[3278]

Oh, god damn it.

[Eyeless Blond]

Hm. Well, I suppose it *is* somewhat appropriate for fans of a roleplaying game set in a corp-ruled dystopian future are a bit wary of a corporation changing their game. :D

[GrinderTheTroll]

[mintcar]

Eldritch: My gaming group is given about 300 $ a year by the government (in Sweden) to buy games. So I gladly give them to the developers of my favorite game. Remember that the game would die if WizKids didn´t produce new books that people want to buy. This will be a major sale. Another rumor that´s been going around is that there will be a Shadowrun game among the release titles for Xbox 2. It´s a rumor I have disregarded, but it has been persistent. Maybe this is a way to prepare for the extra attention from such a release? Vampire got a new computer game about the same time they did their big overhaul.

Prospero: I made the assumption when I read that this was going to be a completely new set of rules, replacing the old ones all together. That has never happened before.

[Kai]

Actually, kudos to FanPro. You realize its been 6 years since SR3 came out? I didn't. Not until I stopped and thought, and went 'good grief I'm getting old'. I'll bitch and moan like the next guy about 3.0 and 3.5, but really, 6 years is a damn good run. And, well, w00t wireless! :love: ...sorry, that's my catchphrase of the moment :7

[mintcar]

I´m optimistic. I was sceptical towards 3:rd edition, but it showed me wrong. In my opinion every single thing they´ve done has been an improvement to the previous versions (eccept the artwork, and the critters book).

[Smed]

I'm going to reserve judgrment on 4th edition until I actually see it. :)

Whether its a good or bad thing for the game is impossible to tell at this point. There is some room for improvement in the game. The technology of the game world was based on an extrapolation of 8o's technology and did not predict well some of the changes that have taken place since then. Breaking everything back down and rebuilding it could be a good thing.

I hope they keep the basic concepts of the game mechanics though. Shadowrun's game mechanics are very well done and help give the game its flavor. The game could use some more consistant rules though. There are so many things that have been added on since the beginning that its difficult sometimes to find some rules.

[Arethusa]

I was going to come in and argue with Eldritch and co, but mfb and Eyeless have more or less echoed all my major feelingson SR3. There is more wrong than right with the current edition, and far too much rules bloat to wade through and required houserulings just to get the game playably sensible, and that's just where it begins. Hopefully, SR4 will be a gigantic step in the right direction, but details seem very nebulous, at the moment, so all there is is hope.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]