Just my .02 cents, Diving into the madness...oh what a fool Options

[SR4-WTF?]

[mfb]

as several of us have said, few of us are particularly tied to keeping CP in its present form. there are oddities and problems associated with the mechanic. what we're looking for is something that makes the game mechanics more than simple mindless hack-and-slash. i don't believe that goal is achievable without some way for players to emphasize certain rolls over others, and to do so fairly often over the course of a battle (eg, not just when they're in trouble and need an ace in the hole to survive). is it possible to achieve this wholly through action selection? yes, Jagged Alliance 2 manages it quite well. but Jagged Alliance 2 is a computer game. i want a game that makes me thing, but not that much.

edit:

[SR4-WTF?]

[mfb]

yeah, that's why i try to avoid detailed maps myself. the SR3 rules just can't handle them well enough to suit my tastes. also, online mapping is often a chore.

the real draw of CP, to me, is that it allows you to break the combat turn down into a lot smaller time increments than "simple action/complex action". even in three seconds, there's a lot of important decision-making that goes on that it's just too cumbersome to represent through actual action selection.

when i say "i've proposed", that's short for "i was part of a group that proposed", just to spread the credit around where it's due. the biggest proposed change i was a part of was melee combat. we completely restructured the skill rules so that armed and unarmed skills worked the same way. despite the glowing reviews, that one didn't make it into the SL house rules because it would have been too much of an entry barrier to new SLers, and too difficult to integrate with SLers who didn't want to use it (SL house rules are all strictly optional). ellery's complete rebuild of the magic system is one change that has seen a lot of support, largely because the end result is pretty much the same as the existing system.

[Ellery]

My stuff isn't a complete rebuild. It uses all the existing mechanics of edges, flaws, and metamagics. It just does so in an extensive way that allows one to rebuild one's magical characters (at some cost) to be more the way one would envision them. And it introduces new rules for learning metamagics (that replace the old rules) since the old rules break when you have too many metamagics.

Unfortunately, a lot of things break in SR when you stretch them very much. Thankfully, the base mechanics don't break, but lots of additions do--I'm happy to give examples upon request.

Very often, the breaking occurs because of linear addition and subtraction. For example, the metamagic rules break because you *must* learn from someone more experienced from you, but the TN goes *down* at the same time, so you end up in the peculiar situation of it being completely impossible to learn a metamagic from almost anyone in the world, except for those rare magicians who are very slightly more advanced than you, in which case it's completely trivial to learn. The problem is caused by "simple" linear trends interacting with caps and subtraction.

It's almost painfully tempting to come up with such systems when trying to "simplify" and "streamline". It takes a lot of work to figure out how to make it work.

Guess what the SR4 mechanic lends itself to?

The genius of tactical pools is not that you can replicate all the various tactical options that you might be able to have with huge tables and lists of interactions (or geometrical interactions or whatnot). Those are all complicated. Tactical pool is simple, yet flexible. That's the trick: tactical pools reward good tactics with a simple, abstract mechanic. It's a great compromise between realism and tactical richness on the one hand, and fast play and simplicity on the other.

You can't get tactics out of opening doors and such unless there are richly populated tables full of bonuses and penalties for various circumstances. SR3 has limited tables of that type, and they certainly help (and require tactical thinking). In SR4, the tactical necessity of position will diminish since for low-skill+atr people, penalties will bottom out and not matter any more, and for high-skill+atr people the loss of a few dice is irrelevant. So they'll need bigger, more complicated tables just to stay even with SR3-minus-tactical-pools.

I hope the tables are well constructed and are of sufficient size and are thorougly playtested for maximum utility with minimum overload. Given the difficulty and time constraints, I'd be very surprised if they are.

[SR4-WTF?]

[SR4-WTF?]

[Raskolnikov]

I will just point out that Shadowland does not hold a single party line or philosophy between all of its userbase. You are looking foolish painting with such a wide brush. Not all negative SR4 posters are from Shadowland, not all Shadowland posters are wholely negative about SR4.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Plus, some of us are entertaining the idea of house rules and pursue them with vigor with others would prefer to stick with one set of canon rules, doesn't matter which edition. Even if I did want to house rule something, I know that my ideas are generally very different that a lot of other peoples' ideas--people on DS and SL or just SL.

I've warmed up to some of the official T6W house rules, but OTOH I rather dislike them when they become more than peripheral (which is what most of the T6W official house rules are with the exception of Called Shots rule and maybe one other). I like the cyberlimbs rules, but I have never used them.

But overall, there is no "SL" that exists as one entity. It's a community with some things in common, but a lot more differences--opinions on SR4 especially.

[Penta]

It certainly feels like it does.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Perhaps you should feel it out a little more then, and you'll realize how foolish that perception is.

[SR4-WTF?]

[SR4-WTF?]

[Penta]

I feel it and feel it, but can hardly feel much difference.

CD, it's becoming nearly correlative that as soon as someone identifies themselves as playing on SL, you can guess with better-than-even accuracy that they're against SR4.

It's a trend.

[Raskolnikov]

Actually you didn't just note any correlation. You started refering to Shadowland like an individual. Additionally, those of us holding out optimism can not break NDA anymore over there than we can here, so it's not suprising you see people who post to both Shadowland and Dumpshock saying the same thing in both places.

I am not terribly concerned, you can think of Shadowland what you may, but many people on Shadowland like SR a lot, not just Shadowland's SR. Many may be of the opinion that it would take some serious 11th hour development to make SR4 a good game, but they're hoping.

[SR4-WTF?]

[Raskolnikov]

Yeah, it is funny how a group of people who play the same game together for years like the same things about the game. We have similar opinons about Shadowrun, on a site dedicated to playing Shadowrun. Critas said "we" a lot.

He did not, however, suggest that Shadowland thinks a certain way, or that it has an inherent reistance to change, for example.

Edit: I'll take the word of your edit above that you intended to mean majority opinion and not collective groupthink.

[mfb]

[SR4-WTF?]

[mfb]

similar opinions != monolith, which is what's being implied.

questions concerning SL's structure should be directed to Ellery, preferably via SL's chat or mail systems. we're here to discuss SR4, not SL. despite recent posts.

[SR4-WTF?]

[SR4-WTF?]

[mfb]

i know what you meant. i was addressing what you actually said, because what you actually said acknowledges the fact that houserulings in any gaming medium require more than a simple assessment of whether the new rules makes sense, without twisting that fact into some sort of gaming Luddism. SL's purpose is to play SR, and a smattering of other games. no gaming group accepts houserules which would end the game, or they quickly cease to be gaming groups. SL is no different. had i addressed what you meant, i'd have been silent partner to your apparent view that it's more important to have good rules than it is to have a gaming group. i'm not of that view.

[Raskolnikov]

If you think you did not imply that, then I'll take your word that you did not mean to. You are trying to be very precise in your wording, that much is obvious. Much of the phrasing is pained and overly complex. You may be mistakenly lacking accuracy though.

[SR4-WTF?]