I think that Dumpshock is marginalizing 4th ed. with the organization of this website. Instead of promoting the new edition and what one supposes is intended as the future of the game with a big fat sign as soon as you log on that says, 4th EDITION RULES THE UNIVERSE, they've got two or three different buttons you have to navigate to reach the 4th ed. cubbyhole. You go past the 3rd ed. stuff first.

Zen--I'd suspect that the shift from 3rd to 4th will slowly translate to a change in the structure of Dumpshock.

Right now the players have marginalized SR4 therefore the structure of the forums matches that. Give the game 6 months to establish itself in our communal mind and the changes will come from within and without.

Um....FanPro's done a pretty good job marginalizing SR4 regardless of the internet.

I'd hardly consider a difference of oppinion thread crapping. Is this starting to turn into 4th Edition facism here? Starting to sound like Necromongers here "Convert now or fall forever."

Anyway. I think the separate forums should stay the way they are now. No need for the added confusion of which edition you're talking about in a thread, just keep them categorized separate.

IMO that is a bit on the harsh side for Catsnightmare, that isn't all he does. As for the thread topic, and the comment about players marginalizing SR4:

The SR4 forum by itself is creating similar numbers of posting (not sure about reading traffic, that's even harder to track) as the parent general SR forum. As a rough example there are more active topics today in this forum than the general one.

Further there are reasons to post in the SR forum even if all you are and plan to play is SR4. For example i made a post requesting canon references to Hong Kong magic to be able to run a few session leadin adventure to give another GM time to kick off a northern Asia campaign. So it isn't really an SR3 forum at all, it is a general SR forum.

So while there might be somewhat of a split, catagorizing SR4 as marginalized by SR players is really misleading.

Well there certainly has been plenty to crap on hasn't there? Maybe if I can ACTUALLY GET A COPY OF THE BOOK I'll have something constructive to add. Sorry, I was under the impression that one could post inane comments, I mean that's basically what this forum contains 90% of the time.

I'm not saying that DS should eliminate everything that isn't SR4 - I'm saying that if they want to promote it, they shouldn't put it in the back.

It'll happen Zen. It's just kinda pointless doing it when most of the playerbase doesn't have access to books yet. Now that they're actually in circulation, I imagine it's not going to be too much longer before we get a general Shadowrun forum, and a Shadowrun 3 sub forum

Gonna have to weigh in with everyone else and say it's all about the Time.

It's only been out since GenCon, and even that wasn't really OUT. Just premiered.

[QUOTE]blakkie Said:

the repetative "SR4 sucks".[QUOTE]

After reading much of the core rules I think that Shadowrun 4E is the best Shadowrun yet. That is what inspired me to start contributing to Dumpshock Foriums. It has been years since I've actually played, but now I want to get a group together.

There is a lot of renewed interest in Shadowrun these days, like on Usenet for example. The outlook is good for Shadowrun to be very popular for quite some time.

It is great that there is an interest in fixing the inevitable problems that arise when trying a new system. I have posted this before, but I think an errata wiki would be the most efficient way of fixing things quickly.

I think most people would agree that the new rules are a big improvement. Of course there is always a group of geeks that can't accept change of any kind. They complain about Smallville and Battlestar Galactica too, as well as the fact that Klingons look different than in classic Star Trek.

i'll say this much:

if i had a computer to handle all the rules and stuff in SR3, i would probably go with SR3, hands down. i do like the system better for a lot of stuff. however, it really is quite complicated, and it can take quite a while to get through some stuff.

SR4 is not personally my favorite system... however, it *is* much more streamlined, and more unified than SR3. while i will be tweaking the rules, i would expect to have to tweak the rules for any game i buy off the shelf. i mean, the only other option (if i want the game to work the way i want it to) is to build it all myself from the ground up, and i guarantee wizkids is gonna do a better job than i am =P

Yes, people tend to dislike change. However not all criticism is for this reason. I have occasionally harsh opinions on certain aspects because of what I feel to be untapped potential and a few just plain mistakes or oversights.

Of course, I feel the improvements outweigh the problems, which is why I'm running a 4th edition game.

I have to admit that, despite the glaring problems, it is still my edition of choice. Plus it actually seems to have far fewer problems than most system rehauls... anyone remember the problems from 2nd edition DnD to 3rd.. bad enough it needed a 3.5.... yick...

Edit: forgot to add I was talking about 2nd and 3rd edition DnD rather than Shadowrun.

Yes Shemhazai, that would be the ones i'm talking about. You joined Oct 11, but how much did you lurk here before that? A relatively small number of people can kick a BIG fuss. The ones that were polite enough, or not motivated enough to actually come to this forum to shake their enraged fist in the air at SR4 on a ongoing basis have mostly moved on. But when SR4 moves into the general SR forum the people that didn't like the idea of SR4, don't like the direction SR4 took, or have a strong preference for SR3 over SR4 (for any number of reasons) certainly have every bit of business staying there. Afterall there are people that still play SR2 that frequent DSF.

If you glance around you'll find at least one signature proclaiming "Proudly sticking to SR3, (and likely SR3R...". *shrug* That person has never posted on the SR4 forum, and i'm certainly not suggesting that he is going make repetative "SR4 sucks" posts (because i don't really know him). But i am expecting friction for a bit.

P.S. Even though there hasn't been any posts to the SR3R threads for more than a month, even the thread dealing with porting any new-to-SR gear in SR4 to SR3, i doubt everyone involved has thrown up their hands and gone home. It wouldn't surprise me if there were people still working on it in smaller groups or solo and communicating via email or such. I have always considered widespread use of SR3R ultimately doomed to for a number of reasons, but that doesn't mean i think nobody will ever play with it or that they won't have fun doing so.

And then there are those of us who realize that, like the dinosaur, classical music, morality and courtesy, "fair use" laws, etc etc, sometimes older designs must be scrapped in favor of the new. And so many people are going to be recognizing this and appearing on the SR4 forum, though grudgingly and with much complaint. Don't think of them as flamers or thread-crappers so much as conscientious objectors; they're here because they feel they have to be, but they're not going to take up arms in service of the SR4 cause, and nor should they be expected to be.

In a way I'm one of them. Looking at the rules I think it would have been much better to wait a few more months and get the many kinks out of the game. I feel they rushed into publishing, and as a result the book reads more like a promising first edition of a brand new game than a well-built fourth edition of an established game. But, unlike for instance Ellery, I'm not going to just up and leave just because I find a few htings that I really don't like. Because, frankly, SR4 is the future, like it or not.

Ah, Damage reduction... personally I didn't like the new version... in fact I went with Monte Cooks Redux of it.

Edit: I agree with Eyeless Blond in this instance. They should have waited longer and work out the kinks more... though perhaps that might not have been financally possible... too many things I just don't know.

I believe that a format change is planned for when Dumpshock migrates to a new forum structure, which as far as I know is currently in the works, and will be happening sometime soon (I hope).

I think I should just make this the first sentance of every post I make from now on: "Ok kids, calm down and play nice."

Gonna follow that up with "If you don't like SR4, don't post in threads about SR4 unless someone specifically asks for the opinion of someone who doesn't like it." Posts like a couple of the above are incredibly pointless, especially in a thread like this.

Now, as for SR4, yeah, there are plans to merge the two at some point in the near future. We've kept them seperate partly because the book wasn't really available to everyone, so we didn't want to clog up the main general SR board with SR4 specific stuff. I'm not sure exactly when Mark and Adam plan to move this forum over, but I expect it to be relatively soon.

Bull

Also, it should be noted that new accounts should default to the "Global" view [if your account is set to "Nested", you can change it via "My Controls -> Edit Profile Info" and then the Forum View dropdown. With Global view, you see all the forums and subforums at once, without having to click through.

The nested forums will totally disappear in the forum software upgrade.

Really, never knew there was that setting? It must have been nested by default 3 years back when i made this one.

For clarification, does this mean that SR4 will continue to be its own little section, just not nested? Or does it mean that SR4 as an independent forum will cease to be altogether, and people will have to post SR4 questions in the general SR area?

I know there isn't a separate SR3 area for those who play SR2, but really, the differences between the two are negligible, and the number of SR2 compared to SR3 players is very low. I don't see the same arguments for SR3 vs. SR4.

Maybe we should have three seperate forums? One would be for SR3-specific topics and more than likely will, months or years from now, eventually die and be rolled into one of the other forums probably . One would be for SR4-specific topics, stuff about the new edition and new sourcebooks. One would be for general topics; things like "what would you keep in your bolthole" or "My players suck. Should I kill them?" would go here. Or would that dilute the forums too much?

(Edit): Oh, and one for Community Projects. Those I think should remain seperate so they don't get drowned in the flood of other topics, as many have a bit of an enduring quality and shouldn't fade as quickly as some of the less significant topics. I found out about the NSRCG because of that forum; I'd hate to see the forum with all its useful information be lost.