Blakkie can't use it as an excuse. He';s been warned a couple times, as have others (And now so are you.)

This is the last warning for everyone that's been having fun playing "Insult My Fellow Dumpshockers". Next step is a time out.

Bull

Wow, that is annoying - implying that someone who knows how to play the game better is a better gamer. Imagine that.

SR is a game. It's not interactive storytelling, or improv theater - it's just as much of a game as chess, or poker, or Monopoly. It's also a lot more, because of the (essential) role-playing aspect, and it's not a game you can win, per se - but you certainly can play it well, or play it poorly... And just because you're bad at playing the game, it doesn't mean you're a better storyteller for it.

And before someone jumps on it - naturally, roleplaying is also a part of playing the game, but being a good gamer and a good roleplayer is not mutually exclusive, despite what a lot of people who aren't good at gaming seem to like to believe.

Outstanding.

~~~~~

To respond to an earlier question: thresholds did exist in SR3. In an Opposed Test, one guy is setting the threshold for the other guy. If you wanted to completely soak some incoming damage, you needed to make a certain number of successes. Technically speaking, a lot of other things had a threshold of 1. That's mostly a semantics quibble, mind you.

We just didn't have a name for thresholds back then because they weren't used as prominently.

Ultimately I bought the game to play action hero, not mathematician.

Metagaming the probabilities, to me, was an unfortunate step on the way to having a reliable character. I made a conscious effort to not get wrapped up in the metagame so I could focus on the game itself (hence deferring the "exploiting" to my calculator).

It's like that for me in every game, sadly: I numbercrunch for a while until I find out what "combos" are the most effective. Then I pick one that's compatible with the flavor of character that I like, and I run with it. I'm a mature enough gamer to regard exploits like that as necessary evils, mostly because I always end up wishing that the system was inherently balanced enough to negate the need for metagaming completely.

I don't mean to imply that metagamers lack skill; the "hacking" the system is a difficult and occasionally time-consuming thing. The effort spent does make your character more mechanically effective.

I appreciate a game system that's flexible enough to allow character diversity but balanced enough to mitigate the need for extracirricular mathematics. I literally gave up on SR3 at one point because I couldn't look at it without seeing just a big pile of exploits and holes rather than a rich gameworld. I'm not saying that SR4 is the holy grail (heck no), but it's at least progress.

And there were thresholds for a number of things, actually. Magic especially was full of thresholds for various spells and the like; they even used the name Threshold for the concept. The thing was, it was never really defined, nor was it brought into the "core" dice rules; it was just sort of tacked on as needed.

What I like about having a three-dimensional probability space (though the dice pool and Threshold dimensions are basically the same shape) is that it lets you do a few things:

1) It lets you model just about anything with more fidelity. Want to make something more chancy, but have higher skill characters still be able to do it? Bump the Threshold. Want to make a task more difficult for everyone? Bump the TN.
2) It allows you to specialize certain types of mods. For instance, dice pool mods can be put entirely under the player's control. Having proper gear increases dice; aiming increases dice; calling a shot or shooting from behind cover reduces dice. Etc etc. Under the current system the GM has to tell the player how many dice he's rolling, which prevents the player from pre-rolling his dice pool in advance of his turn, a common technique with experienced players in most game systems to speed up combat.

True!

Edit: Another "True!" to Eyeless for the same reason.

Fun things is... SR3 was commented that way, too:

"If you like to turn off your brain when playing, SR3 might be you system - if not, try X-Punk."

Same rhetorical bullshit, different asshole - there's a difference between stating an opion and going on a crusade.

Except that what I actually said is that preferring the complicated math doesn't make you a better gamer -- I said nothing about being more skilled at it. Both preferring and being good at the complication (in math, not in game options) does, I'll grant you, make you better at SR3. But I think that was my point, actually.

Now this we can agree on.

However, my point is that SR4 opens up the game to all those people who *are* good at storytelling, but don't *want* to play the metagame of math. As you yourself said, playing the math and rules part is a necessary part to being "good" at SR3. In SR4, the rules and math are both simpler, and matter much less. This is a good thing, if and only if you don't really, really enjoy all the math. If you really do prefer more math and more metagaming, then I totally agree, SR3 is the system for you.

And then, we're back here again. I never said, or implied, and in fact directly contradicted, the idea that the people who liked the game without the math are "bad at the game" or "bad at math." Nor did I ever even imply that being good at the game system and good at roleplaying where mutually exclusive (except very mildly -- do you disagree with the statement that having a higher percentage of your time available for plot and roleplaying considerations is better for, well, plot and roleplaying? Because that's the statement I did make.)

In short, what I said was, and is, this: If you prefer the roleplaying aspects to the metagaming (statistic-hunting) aspects of the game, SR4 is a better system, because such metagame aspects are not necessary, nor even supported -- so no allowances for people who do this type of metagame strongly (by desire or need) need to be made.

That's the simple statement. I never said those that didn't prefer the metagame were "bad at it" as you keep saying (some are quite good at it in my experience.) I never said people who did prefer the metagame were bad at roleplaying, as you keep implying was said. And I've never said preferring story over metagame was a magic wand to make excellent players. And all I've been asking for, is to please stop associating "bad at math" (or Critias's stronger statements on intelligence) with "prefers the other aspects of the game." My statement has nothing at all to do with skill or intelligence, and everything to do with preference.

See? You're already halfway playing SR4 and you don't even know it

I laughed. I cried. I laughed again.*

*not really; I'm an android**. But the simulations of those experiences as a result of this input were quite vivid.

** Not really an android, but I play one on TV***.

*** Except that by TV, I mean "In front of a cardboard box with a TV shaped cutout****."

**** Except without the cutout, or the android part. Will someone please come by and let me out of this box? Or at least poke an air hole? I promise not to bite, this time*****.

***** This promise is non-binding in any way. I might very well bite.

It wasn't. The function is short and the arithmitic is easy. I don't have any difficulty doing it in my head for TNs below 24. I above 24 the powers of 6 get a little out of hand but how often does that come up?

That's exactly what I was trying to say. That's identical to the position I found myself in, and my feelings on SR4 (heck no on the holy grail, but a step in the right direction), and that's the feeling I was trying to get across.

I couldn't have put this better myself.
The whole discussion is moot anyways. It's just different styles of play. None better as the other.

I think you're making a bunch of assumptions here that I don't agree with...

Playing the game "well" is not inherently the same thing as metagaming - and it certainly is not the same thing as graphing probabilities, trying to find some anomaly to exploit. Most of the time, it simply translates into playing a character who uses good tactics / acts intelligently.

Also, you talk about "preferring" the "metagame" a lot - which does make it sound, whatever your intent, like you consider gaming and role-playing to be mutually exclusive... Or at the very least, seem to think that the rules unavoidably get in the way of the storytelling. Whereas from the point of view of someone who understands the system well, being good at the game simply gives you more control and lets you make the story happen - rather than simply telling it.

In fact, from my point of view, understanding the mechanics makes for better storytelling - assuming what you're interested in to begin with is playing a RPG, not writing a novel.

You can (meta)game well and you can roleplay well. The two are not mutually exclusive, and my personal goal is to do both simultaneously.

If I was just interested in metagaming, I'd get something like a board game out (i.e.: Shadowrun Duels). If I was just interested in roleplaying, I'd go join a Shadowrun LARP.

I want to do some of both, so I play Shadowrun tabletop.

I have to agree with you on this, absolutely.

I only phrased it that way in direct response to your comment:

Which was in response to my earlier metagame comments -- that is, graphing probabilities and the whole banana.

Thus, since you defined "better at the game" as better at the number crunching (or, at the very least, I understood that to be your meaning based on your comments) I went with that as an operational definition of the phrase. That's why I left it in quotes, too. But I can absolutely see how it would come across that I related the two, and I should have been more clear.

Unfortunately, when I get more clear, I get more wordy. And I'd say I'm well past "wordy enough" as is

Now this, in theory, I also agree with you on. I think that a rich set of rules *do* tend to "help the story happen." I also try very hard to avoid the "writing the novel" effect. In pen and paper, this can get monotonous for the players. I also used to do a lot of live action, and there the "dragging the players through a story" could be absolutely disastrous to gameplay.

But, as I said before, aside from dice pools (which I do sometimes still miss), SR4 gives you every single complex option for combat (not for riggers or deckers or magic, perhaps -- but those sourcebooks aren't out yet.) Thus, there is just as much room for letting the story happen in one system as the other -- in my opinion. I am curious on your thoughts on this aspect -- do you feel the rules of one system or the other support "making the story happen" to a greater extent?

Here's my thoughts on why I think SR4 is better in this regard. In SR3, the statistical anomalies of the variable target numbers meant, as I demonstrated above, that if you search the options space long enough, you will find one that allows you to double your successes. In SR4, finding the optimal solution is greatly simplified -- without removing the complexity of options. In other words, it removes the complexity of choice without removing the complexity of story and action. This in turn speeds gameplay, with the only sacrifice (again, in my opinion) being what I called the "metagame" above. By which I meant the searching through dice probabilities for the optimal solution according to the game mechanics. Looser (not to be confused with "loser") game mechanics means that the optimal solution depends more on the situation and story than just how you decide to roll the dice. That, I believe, fits the definition of "playing the game well" that you listed this time.

Don't get me wrong, there are a few great examples of SR3 "mechanical weirdness" that I will miss. I really liked the defaulting rules -- I miss that sometimes you would *want* to default, instead of use a low skill. When I was first learning to type, I would occasionally go back to "hunting and pecking" -- because I could do that faster, and sometimes time was an issue. In the end, it hurt my learning, but it helped me achieve an immediate goal. SR3 simulated that very well; SR4 does not. That's a story area where the complication of SR3 was better, for me.

However, the sudden doubling of hits (or halving of hits) based on a tiny change that in other, nearly identical circumstances would have no effect, did get in the way of the story for me. As did paging through some of the more complicated rules (specifically, MIJI.) For me, these results came up much more often than the beneficial side effects of the SR3 rules.

Indeed, the existence of those artifacts is a big problem that some of us have mentioned. I'm interested in hearing methods of smoothing them out.

... isn't the GM "forced" to exert control over every roll by deciding on target number modifiers and all that jazz in SR3? And weren't there variable levels of success in SR3? Fixing the TNs and unlocking the minimum number of successes required from being 1 smoothed out an awful lot of wonky stuff.

Yes, there are ways around the bizarre artifacts that crop up, like your suggestion of adding 4 on rolls of 5-6 (which I would probably get used to, given time), but what's this "huge dice pool" problem you're talking about?

Maybe this comes from being a Warhammer 40k player, but "handful of dice vs fixed TN" doesn't bug me at all. Take basic pool number, apply modifiers, pick up that many dice, throw, and count all the 5+'s. If you must insist on using edge, you might see some rerolls. SR4 rarely invokes any of the bizarreness you'll find in 40k like twin-linking (re-roll misses once), mixed pools (the squad's machinegunner has a more powerful weapon, so it'd help if HIS dice were a different color so you knew which they were, since they'll have a different target number on one test and may or may not have to make another), and combined rolls (sometimes you just roll 2d6, sometimes it's 2d6, pick the highest, and sometimes it's 2d6, pick the lowest). Mobs of Orks charging into close combat can roll upwards of a hundred dice (!), with the successes getting re-rolled, and THOSE successes getting rerolled to determine the final effect, and the TN's aren't fixed on any of those tests.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'd rather throw, say, 20 dice once (with Edge being a rare exception with the Rule of 6) with a fairly steady curve, than have to chain-reroll sixes for any difficult test, with the target number bouncing around based on if I decide to use my training or not.

Doesn't SR3 have a big chunk right in the main book where it talks about choosing a basic TN for tests where there isn't one explicitly given? Namely, your GM chooses how difficult the test is supposed to be, assigns that base TN to it, and then you apply modifiers?

How is that any less arbitrary than the GM choosing how difficult the test is supposed to be and then assigning a threshold? Sticking with the stock Rule of 6 probability progression, the GM deciding one higher or one lower can have a huge effect on your probability... while the same is true of threshold, the range of suggested thresholds runs 1-4, rather than SR3's suggested range of 2-16.

15, actually, but yeah.

You add stat and skill together. Specialization adds in another 2 dice. When it comes to firearms, smartlink adds in two more... Adept abilities probably add even more dice (though around the time I gave up on SR4, the rules on that were still completely unclear and contradictory). Having 12 dice in something at chargen is trivial. 15 is easy without gimping the character.

Isn't that like the SR3 rule where the gamemaster has to eyeball which TNs apply? Remember, "in combat" the thresholds in SR4 are all calculated for you - the rolls are opposed so the threshold is always your opponent's hits.

Heck, D&D has rules where the DM can arbitrarily raise or lower DCs, WoD has rules where the Storyteller can arbitrarily raise and lower difficulty as well. In fact, every game since Tunnels and Trolls has had a system for that kind of crap.

Your complaint - that gamemasters have the power to raise or lower thresholds or dice pool modifiers if they don't feel that they adequately capture the difficulty or ease of an activity - isn't a bug. It's a feature. And it's a universal feature common to all RPGs written since the 70s. The 1970s.

If you want to complain about SR4 and not get openly laughed at, I strongly suggest that you pick on SR4's actual problems instead of made up stuff. Heck, even if you do pick on the game's positive features as being something you don't like, I still strongly council you to select a feature that is actually unique to SR4.

---

For example, you could go after the fact that in SR4 you can take your time and automatically succeed at a task that you are 80% likely to succeed at anyway. In D20, you can take your time and automatically succeed if your chance of success was only 55%. That's a major difference. A difference I happen to like, but it's obviously not for everyone and some people don't like it.

-Frank

that's not how it was explained to me earlier. when i said the game was broken because someone with 12 dice could routinely (80% likelihood) make impossible shots with a firearm, i was told "no no, the GM can just raise the threshold if he thinks the shot should be harder". now you're telling me that, no, the GM shouldn't mess with the thresholds in combat, because they're already set. either way, it's pretty badly broken--if the GM has to change the threshold, it's broken because the modifiers listed don't reflect the difficulty of the situation; if the GM doesn't have to change the threshold, it's broken because the impossible becomes routine for anyone who puts for any effort at being good at it.

let me restate: my complaint isn't that the GM has the power to change the difficulty of any test. my complaint is that the GM has to change the difficulty of a lot more tests in SR4 than in SR3, in order to bring the level of difficulty to within ten leagues of reality.

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about with "impossible shots".

If you have a dice pool of 12, and you are in full darkness (-6), at extreme range (-3), and spend a couple of rounds aiming at a target that he somehow knows is there, he can potentially roll up to 6 dice before moifiers for cover or the attacker's position (for example, being in a moving vehicle, or running, or whatever).

So yeah, then the target can go full defensive and need to get perhaps as many as two hits to avoid that aimed shot.

And I don't have a problem with that. At all. I don't know why you seem to. If you know where an unmoving target is, and you are a frickin ninja with a ballistic computer in your head, I don't think it's at all weird that you could spend some time thinking about it to barely tag an unmoving target at extreme range that was completely obscured by a snow storm. Real people without ballistic computers in their heads really do that in the Winter Olympics every year.

-Frank

That's why there's a GM. It doesn't matter to me if you have enough dice to make "that shot", you aren't going to if it isn't possible.

Absolutely. However, I think a lot of people are mis-applying the blind fire modifier here.

This is a situation where blind fire (-6 dice) should apply:

This is not a situation that is sufficiently covered by the blind fire modifier.

That being said, I do agree that the consistent application of thresholds forces the GM to make more on the spot judgement calls about difficulty than SR3 TNs did. (If you have to shoot a man-sized moving target with partial concealment at moderate range, is that average difficulty, or hard? Does the difficulty change depending on whether it's a skill 1 shooter or a skill 6 shooter, 'cause what's hard for me might not seem hard for the trained sniper?)

You have to factor in all those modifiers to the dice pool already, if it influences the threshold too it's kind of a double whammy.

I do have another problem with the scaling impact of TNs in SR3, though. Because the impact of a +1 or -1 to TN changes too much based on what TN you're modifying. Say I have Pistols 3, and I'm shooting a pistol at close range (TN4), but my ears are ringing a little from that punch I took a few minutes ago (light stun, +1TN). The stun damage (+1TN) changed my likelihood of success from 88% to 70% (-18% chance). If, however, I have another minor distraction (low level stink spell +1TN) my stun damage is changing my TN from TN5 (70%) to TN6 (42%): a -28% modifier. The stun damage was the same both times, but its impact on me is inconsistent. This inconsistency bothers me.