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Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
Black
This is just a quick question, but does anyone on dumpshock even like shaddowrun??? in any form??? I mean SR 1,2,3 or 4?
I mean even for dumpshock I think picking the rules apart has reached an all time high. Isn't it enough to just enjoy the game anymore?

sorry i think I'm just crazey rotfl.gif but hell...
I'm not gonna bother making this post too long cause I'm prolly just gonna get flamed but does anyone feel me here???
Toptomcat
Shadowrun, as a ruleset, is only slightly less complicated than nuclear physics.

As such, the only people who will play it are of a somewhat finicky, detail-oriented mindset.
hyzmarca
We nitpick because we love. We're like domestic abusers that way.
Mr Cjelli
Actually, we all play SR because of how painful it is. It's a game that appeals to masochists.
Kagetenshi
Nitpicking is just another game, and one that's easier to arrange time for than playing.

~J
toturi
QUOTE (Toptomcat)
Shadowrun, as a ruleset, is only slightly less complicated than nuclear physics.

As such, the only people who will play it are of a somewhat finicky, detail-oriented mindset.

I know someone who insists that Exalted is more complex than SR. Little does he know...
Toptomcat
Maybe without the gear...
Shadow
I love SR3, can't stand 4 so I don't even discuss it anymore. I don't really like to nitpick the rules so much as set others strait when they go wrong smile.gif
SL James
I hate Shadowrun so much I only play it every day.
hobgoblin
i guess most of the time you can boil it down to:
love the setting, hate the rules...
or atleast the part of the rules that are closest to their rl hobby or job (thats why you see people take apart the weapons, computing and vehicle rules but leave the magic ones alone).
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
thats why you see people take apart the weapons, computing and vehicle rules but leave the magic ones alone

Well, there was this...
SL James
I hate the setting, love the rules.

Austere: To quote Family Guy, "Holy freaking god...."
hobgoblin
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
QUOTE (hobgoblin)
thats why you see people take apart the weapons, computing and vehicle rules but leave the magic ones alone

Well, there was this...

well well, looks like it have slipped past my radar. or maybe i just dont recall that thread nyahnyah.gif

anyways, unless there is more threads of the same topic out there is would say that magic have a much lower % when it comes to being take appart then any of the others i listed...

and sl james, if you love the rules but hate the setting i fear your the odd one out that proves the rule smokin.gif
Ophis
Hey I love both, I just think there are a few minor teaks to be made...
hobgoblin
minor seems to turn into major quite fast on this page...
Critias
I like SR3 enough to have...well...played it quite a bit. But they've been working on changing my mind for a good six months now.
nezumi
Yeah, I hate shadowrun. What a load of hooey. I mean, come on! Those crazy dwarves don't live in mines, sometimes the elves are neither rich NOR beautiful (and occaisionally even heterosexual), plus there are no vorpal swords.

Seriously, I love Shadowrun. I love the setting. I've played CP2020, which aims to directly draw upon the great novels by Gibson, but despite having so much material available, their description of the world is, frankly, crap. I've glanced at GURPS, which seems to at least be consistent, but again, the setting of Shadowrun blows either of those away. You can run *ANYTHING* in Shadowrun. Space games... Horror games... Hunting dragons games... I really can't think of any genre the SR setting doesn't at least touch on, and with a little minor tweaking, can fully exploit. It grabs the creativity and newness of fantasy, with the cool toys and realism of modern-setting games.

I love the mechanics. SR3 is terrific, and really, the basic dice mechanic can be pulled out and applied to most any other setting (again, with minor tweaking. Pools become more difficult if no one has initiative enhancers.) There are some aspects that could use work (rigging, most certainly, and decking in a few aspects), but for the most part, it's a beautiful piece of work. The variable TN, variable number of die adds a logical and consistent way of adjusting the difficulty of a task very easily, and with a high level of control.

I haven't played SR4, but I'm sort of in a love-hate relationship with it still. I love some of the things they've done (unified the system! Brought in wireless!) but hate others (dropped variable TNs and pools). The latter I think makes the game easier to play, but there's a level of detail there that's naturally lost.

I daresay that everyone on this board loves SOME aspect of the game. We don't have to love it all (thank goodness FASA's Game Police initiative fell through), just enough that we come away enjoying the game (with however many houserules you've pinned onto it).
Clyde
I love SR 2, 3 AND 4! Never got to play one frown.gif
PlatonicPimp
Love the setting. Thats the Key here. We love teh setting. So much so we hate to see it abused. We nitpick metaplot and other issues because we want the setting to actually be as cool as we imagine it.

SR3: from a gamist perspective, I loved the rules. They were great simulations, accounted for so many things. Sure, the damages were wonky, but the basic skill tests invloved variable dice pools, variable target numbers, and variable thresholds, as well as strait and opposed tests, and all of those effected the probabilities in different ways. If only the rule of 7 were better worked out.

Trying to actually play this beauty of a system was a pain in the Ass, especially with all the expansions.

SR4: Fixes a lot of the issues with SR3, but with so many issues of it's own it hardly seems as though Fanpro paid an editor. I want it to work, desparately, but as written it doesn't. So I'm fixing it. We are early enough in the game taht Fanpro could actually fix a lot of the issues we are bringing up in errata or future sourcebooks. They probably won't, but they could.
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (nezumi)
Pools become more difficult if no one has initiative enhancers.

Not if you have them refresh every few turns instead of every one. Granted they don't become a semi-balancer to speed like they do in SR3, but it allows tactical decisions to be made with them rather than "free dice!"

~J
SL James
QUOTE (hobgoblin @ Oct 27 2005, 03:24 AM)
and sl james, if you love the rules but hate the setting i fear your the odd one out that proves the rule smokin.gif

I wouldn't mind it so much if it didn't try to be utopian anymore.

But what it has proven over the last... while... is that it proves that just because fans think they can do a better job, doesn't mean they actually can. Even trying to fix what is often seen as messes requires too many cascading fixes that becomes painful in a very short order. At least CP2020 said "we're going to do some crazy shit, and how do you like that?" instead of maintaining some pretense of being "realistic."
Roadspike
Love the setting (love, love, love the setting), really enjoy the rules (3rd or 4th, doesn't matter to me, I like 'em both). They're wonky enough to be quirky and let me fiddle, but once you've got them down, they're intuitive enough (at least to me) that you can let the game flow around them.
Critias
I like the basics of the setting, but it seems like the more detail they put into it (and the more they fuck with the timeline), the more it sucks. Give us broad strokes (or, better yet, broad strokes that make sense), and then let individual games fill in the details -- that's what I'd like to see.

And no more retroactive timeline BS. The beginning of the slippery slope towards crappiness started -- in earnest -- when I read the TT chapter of SoNA (and it mentioned all this crap that'd happened in recent years, without any of that same crap being mentioned in any other book at the time).
SL James
There's a lot of that in Shadows of North America, but yeah, TT got assraped. Probably an outcome necessary to make events in System Failure even remotely believable.
PlatonicPimp
What we're saying, basically, is that we are geeks. Look at star wars fans. Thew movies and the setting mean so much to them that they spend endless amounts of time analyzing and deconstructing it. It's more than fiction, it has a reality to it for them (Though their takes on it's reality don't always agree.) When they feel that their reality of the setting is violated, they get upset.

Or look at comic book geeks. They will remember things about continuity that the authors of the comics themselves have forgotten, and catch them in mistakes and incongruities that they make as a result. They will complain bitterly that the story isn't "right" or even 'realistic", though the setting involves people running around in spandex and anti-gravity boobs. It doesn't mean they hate the comics. In fact, they love them. They love them too much, they are too important to them and they should relax. But having fans who don't relax, who bring this stuff up, and who try to correct things instead of abandoning the setting for something more like what they want. is the mark of a great, compelling setting.
Dog
And hey! Nobody flamed you for the thread after all!

Group hug!
SL James
Wait a while.
PlatonicPimp
Oh, yeah, and I hate you for posting this thread, Black. mad.gif
Grinder
QUOTE (Dog @ Oct 27 2005, 07:15 PM)
And hey! Nobody flamed you for the thread after all!

Group hug!

We're becoming calmer over the years it seems.
Roadspike
I completely agree with PlatonicPimp's description of geek fandom, and think it applies very well to the situation at hand. We (Dumpshockers and SR fans as a whole) rag on the system/setting because we hold it up to such high standards, and whenever it fails to meet those standards, we get upset.
Teulisch
shadowrun is a good thing.

setting is always more important than rules. rules change. setting stays more or less the same, only changing when it must for the rules.

i like the deatils. they make it a better game for me. because they make the game focus on important details. combat is lethal, reaction enhancement is a must-have.
nezumi
QUOTE (Teulisch)
i like the deatils.

I hope this was intentional nyahnyah.gif

That said, the setting DOES change, quite substantially, really. Between SR1 and SR4, we've seen the introduction of quite a few new characters and politics have shifted significantly. Granted, it's still on Earth and in the future. We still have magic and big companies like Ares. But those are some pretty giant things, the equivalent of which (we use d6, orks get a bonus to strength...) have stayed with us since SR1 as well.

On top of that, just because setting could be more permanent is no reason why it's 'more important'. The air in your lungs is exchanged how many times a day? Is that less important because it's so temporary?
blakkie
There is a difference between change and evolution. The removal of "Grounding" from SR2 to SR3? Change. Fuchi dissolved and the parts spread hither and fro; the proliferation of wireless Matrix access in SR4; PCC taking over LA? Evolution.

Sometimes the line is blurry, such as when the likelihood of the evolution is dubious. But there is a difference.
Rifleman
QUOTE (Grinder)
QUOTE (Dog @ Oct 27 2005, 07:15 PM)
And hey! Nobody flamed you for the thread after all!

Group hug!

We're becoming calmer over the years it seems.

That, and the more vocal members are currently distracted in the SR4 discussion area. biggrin.gif
nezumi
QUOTE (blakkie)
There is a difference between change and evolution. The removal of "Grounding" from SR2 to SR3? Change. Fuchi dissolved and the parts spread hither and fro; the proliferation of wireless Matrix access in SR4; PCC taking over LA? Evolution.

ev·o·lu·tion

A continuing process of change from one state or condition to another or from one form to another.

Evolution is change over time. Hence, evolution is a subset of change. They are different, but an evolution is still a change. That said, I really have no idea what your post was in regards to nyahnyah.gif
Kagetenshi
Moreover, the move to wireless was not "over time". Now-you-don't, now-you-see-it introductions are change but not evolution.

~J
Black
well... that certainly answers my question.
big thanks to all involved in the process.
blakkie
QUOTE (nezumi @ Oct 28 2005, 01:37 PM)
Evolution is change over time.  Hence, evolution is a subset of change.  They are different, but an evolution is still a change.  That said, I really have no idea what your post was in regards to nyahnyah.gif

I was trying to point out there is a difference between discontinuous (meaning #1.c) change vs. evolution (meaning #4) change. The former generally bad, although at times it happens in the process of keep things squared away during overall improvements, or in fixing past mistakes (i think Grounding falls under that). The latter is better and in fact if you want to have a metaplot, which SR has always had (for better or worse), to some extent a requirement. If something doesn't change at least somewhat that's a good sign it isn't living. wink.gif
Kyoto Kid
QUOTE (toturi)
QUOTE (Toptomcat @ Oct 27 2005, 08:55 AM)
Shadowrun, as a ruleset, is only slightly less complicated than nuclear physics.

As such, the only people who will play it are of a somewhat finicky, detail-oriented mindset.

I know someone who insists that Exalted is more complex than SR. Little does he know...

Then there was Chivalry & Sorcery and Space Opera from FGU. Now those were complex rule systems.

C&S actually had algebraic equations for figuring out your character's secondary attributes.

Space Opera's modifiers for combat resolution (both character & starship) make Shadowrun's look about as complex as Tunnels & Trolls. The pocket scientific calculators & notebook computers we use to crunch numbers in today's gaming (and which we now take for granted) filled the basement of a college.math sciences building back then. I still have fond memories of having to figure TISA drive fuel consumption factors using a slide ruler and graph paper. That is extreme geek.
SL James
So that's where Jon Szeto learned how to write vehicle combat rules.
Dog
So if what we're saying is: "Loving something doesn't mean pretending it's perfect; we like it so much we are willing to fight to fix what's wrong with it."

Aren't we managing to paraphrase Michael Moore and Timmy McVeigh at the same time? Cool.
SL James
No. We're willing to destroy it to save it.
brohopcp
Black, I quit dumpshock for 2 years because of the nitpickery. To be honest, I didn't feel knowledgable enough to post most of the time, and in "Welcome to the Shadow's" thread I always felt if I didn't research every post I'd be ridiculed (privately or publically).

I returned for one reason and one reason only... To Join The Drop Bear Conspiracy
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (brohopcp)
Black, I quit dumpshock for 2 years because of the nitpickery. To be honest, I didn't feel knowledgable enough to post most of the time, and in "Welcome to the Shadow's" thread I always felt if I didn't research every post I'd be ridiculed (privately or publically).

I returned for one reason and one reason only... To Join The Drop Bear Conspiracy

Tch, such a lack of mastery. Clearly you need to reread your Drop Bear Army Handout.

~J
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