Apparently two legged stools do stand. Maybe Edge is a really wide leg, like a piece of board or something? Being a good player still does count for a lot, perhaps more than ever. I do like that character actions got somewhat of a boost over dice pool maneuvering. It helps push describing of the action more into the visual rather than abstract.

I never found Combat Pool all that it was cracked up to be from a tactically engaging, meaning difficult, problem in itself. Doing the judging on the fly did help there. You guys certainly aren't playing anything resembling on the fly. I also found the way it refreshed heavily encouraged metagaming around the arbitraty division of actions into Combat Turns. Similar to way that the 6-7 TN problem created odd metagaming. To it's credit the CP could produce exciting, cinematic results for sure where you could use it. Fortunately the later hasn't been lost in SR4, and it the scope of use has expanded. Although you can design your character to be weak in Edge, that is also a strength that it varies character to character and independant of the other Attributes.

I'm puzzled by exactly what you were expecting from SR4. Maybe you aren't such a mystery given that you are so cynical, but mfb. You guys aren't even remotely playing a tabletop game. You are playing a mail order game. If I owned Fanpro I'd fire on the spot anyone that centered their design goals for a pen and paper RPG on having a combat that lasted a month. If I found out after the fact that they threw my money away like that I might nut punch them first before firing them.

SR4, SR for the rest of us that don't play games where a single combat lasts a month.

Congratulations, you are one of the small minority of gamers. I wouldn't punch the designer in the nuts before firing him for basing it around your experience.

A new edition of a game I like a lot. That's not what we got, though. We got "Shadowrun: Reboot" or something. Similar fluff, amazingly different system. Not in any edition change previous -- not even "the first big change," from SR1 to SR2 -- were there changes as big as between 3 and 4. I was "expecting" Shadowrun 3, a little polished, missing a few rough edges, but overall similar. You can understand, I imagine, my disappointment (and that of many others).

Way to leap, cackling madly, to conclusions.

First of all, I play Shadowrun tabletop, not just on Shadowland. The conversation turned to SL in particular, so I was taking part in the conversation. I apologize if I was somehow unclear -- SL is not the extent of my Shadowrun experience. I played table top before SL, I play tabletop now that I'm on SL (5+ years), and I'm sure I'll be playing tabletop long after our server suffers from The Big One.

Your argument is grounded on ignorance (not only in that all we play is Shadowland-SR, but in that you have the faintest idea what SL-play is like). Because the conversation turned (vaguely, somehow) towards what we do on Shadowland, MFB and I were sharing some experiences. Enlightening the masses, if you will, from the heights of our "Ivory Tower" (as some gave developers, no less, have referred to us).

MFB mentioned in passing that's it's possible for large combats to last a month (he didn't mention it's often due to server issues, players having children, college labs closing down, players deploying with the military, or a host of other reasons). Because you have no idea what he's talking about, you took that straight to heart, and assumed it means all combats (or, in fact, all interactions) take a month. Stop assuming. And stop taking your assumption and making it the basis of an insult, just as the rest of us were turning this thread to a fairly civil direction.

You're casting stones and implying insults without any inkling of what you're talking about (or the caliber of player, for that matter, that Shadowland has seen over the years). Do us all a favor, and quit while you're only this far behind.

Used to be able to sell phones the size of a large coffee mug that weighed 1/2 a pound and had batteries that worked for maybe 40 minutes of air time. Sold millions of them.

Now knowledge in the industry has grown and is being used to make much more portable options for much more convient. You think it is a good idea for someone to bet their company trying to grow business by designing something based on a market that had no other feasible options?

Save you time and energy and treat anyone still willing to play SR3 nice. Because it is going to get even harder to convince or find new ones.

Not sure I understand this line. You weren't going to play the new version anyway? Or you wanted them to keep everything else there?

He said it was because there were long times between posts. It doesn't really matter why. Except maybe if it was the rules themself. But that didn't even cross my mind.

I can certainly understand why someone would get that impression of your attitude.

You still just don't know what you're talking about. You're working off assumptions, and obviously incorrect ones. Can things go wrong on SL? Sure. Can they in real life, too? You bet'cha. Pizza man comes by late, someone's parents need the basement back, someone's room-mate shows back up, someone's cell phone rings, someone's study group goes over, someone gets called into work -- a million and one things can make a game start late, stop early, or be interrupted repeatedly mid-session, in a table top game, right? Similarly, entire sessions can be skipped over due to schedule conflicts.

*shrugs* Shit happens. It just happens to SL, too, sometimes.

But just like stuff can run smooth in a table top game, it can run smooth on SL, too. Maybe time zones line up just right. Maybe someone's off work for a night. Maybe someone's class gets cancelled. Maybe someone gets a job in a computer lab for increased access. Tardy players get skipped (though I'm one of the few GMs that does that), maybe. There've been times -- when we're all on-line at once -- SL sessions have gone just as quickly and smoothly as any table top session I've been in.

You're acting like every combat takes a month, and you're acting like that (once again) because you just don't know what you're talking about. What's more, you're acting like because some scenes do take a month (for some reason), it means everyone sits around for a month and thinks about what they'll do next. Just like in a tabletop game, that's not the case -- you might have a vague idea ("Italy said we should always geek the mage, first.") of what you'll plan on doing when you log on and see it's your turn...but there's no gaurantee that the situation hasn't changed before you're up, just like in a tabletop game ("But Connor just popped a six-shot burst into the mage's head. Now what do I do?").

Most of the time, decisions about what your character will do happen just about real-time, same as a table top game. The only thing slowing you down is your typing speed (and for some of us, that's not much of an impediment at all). SL games can be just as "on the fly" as one sitting around a table, eating pizza and tossing plastic cubes with your friends.

Oh noes! I got called snooty!

You've been living under a rock? Game design has advanced a lot.

Or you think that the heft of that old phone is great feature because you can use it to clobber a mugger when you aren't able to phone 911 after the battery dies?

So how would you describe the trend of the number of SR3 players that you have experienced before SR4 was announced? New players coming in versus players disappearing? How about membership numbers on Shadowland? I mean live bodies, not dead accounts sitting in a file.

Because I was seeing SR3 flatline for active players.

no, game design has shifted as games face more and more competition. if ten years from now, console gaming experiences a recession and pen-and-paper RPGs become more popular, and game companies start putting out more detailed game systems, that won't be an advancement, either. it will simply be a response to the market. forty-pound cellphones with no memory function and a short battery life are never going to come back into vogue. apples and marmosets.

then you were not seeing the whole picture. SR3 had a fairly stable market--it wasn't growing by leaps and bounds, but it wasn't really shrinking, either. SR4 is an attempt to jump into a new, faster-growing market, which necessarily means leaving portions of the old market behind. i never said it didn't make good business sense.

You aren't getting it. The super complex RPG ruleset didn't just get left behind in style shift. It went to computers. It isn't coming back to pen and paper. On the offchance it comes back to the table top it will be running on a computer, and the development costs there are not going to support anything that you'll recognize as the Shadowrun environment. Critias squeals about how Fanpro butchered the setting? Absolutely nothing compared to what Electronic Arts would do.

Market isn't all player count. As a product line matures it is going to have a period where the sales of new products allow you to hold sales stable or only lose a bit of ground. But the underlying customer base is disappearing.

Then exactly how do you think you are going to change the situation? If you want to see SR3 replaced, but not with SR4, then you shouldn't be wasting time here. You should be typing up those new rules yourself, because you have a lot of work to do.

Said and debunked as a largely superficial comparison.

Why convert the dice system? Besides the PR of being able to say "look, a fresh dice system instead of a 20 year old hasbeen"? Because of a fresh dice system designed to merge all the different parts of SR rules that had been tacked on over the years.

I thought I was going to miss the Combat Pool too. That the dice tactics might be lacking a bit. But took I the chance anyway and found I was very wrong.

No, actually. I like the setting just fine, for the most part. It's the system they've fucked up.

He is, actually. And, yes, he (and others) have done a lot of work.

Amidst all the cutesie little reasons you listed, you forgot the big one. "To dumb down the system enough that we're going to try and make pen-and-paper RPGs compete against PC monitors and X-Box linked TV screens, to capture the attention of thirteen year olds."

No problem. I think it's time I leave the hyperkinetic monkey to wallow in his own filth.

I wouldn't call the core of a system (fixed TNs, Hits and dice pools equal to the combination of attributes and skills) superficial, but I dont really have the intention to heat up old debates, so I'll leave that be.

While I agree that somethimes a new system can improve things as compared to patching up an old one, but I never had the impression that the d6 system was bad. In fact, the system pretty much defined SR for many people. I was never under the impression that the different parts of SR were all that different or difficult to manage as well.
Ad quite honestly, complexity is an integral part of any roleplaying game. Even the simplest system will inevitably become more and more complex the longer it runs up to the point that character creation and management becomes more and more time consuming. Combat rules are just one example. Every system starts out light, but every system gets more and more options as time goes by.
Most people I've seen who prefer SR4 do so because the system is easier and faster to manage. Give it a year or two and it'll be just as complex as any other.

In my opionion, SR4 took alot more shadowrun away than it should have, but that is my opinion. The good thing about roleplaying games is that you dont need a system to have a common ground. Mechanics are just the tool to tell the story and conversions are done easily enough to incorporate old and new material into whatever ruleset your playing with.

it hasn't gone to computers, either--it's simply gone away, period, for the time being. most super-complex rulesets in computers are behind the scenes; the player makes a few basic choices and hits some buttons, and the computer handles the rest for him. that appeals to a lot of gamers; they want to spend their time hacking up bad guys, not balancing figures for an optimal configuration, backed by a deep understanding of the game's mechanics.

but that style of game, and that type of gamer, isn't necessarily going to be out of vogue and out of luck (respectively) forever. it's not like there's some kind of likes simple games dominant gene that's crowding out the cro-magnon complex gamers with their newfangled sharp rocks. the pendulum is simply swinging in one direction.

Yes, it has gone behind the computer faceplate and there it is going to stay outside of a niche of a niche curios.

Why? Your description implies that having the computer handle rules housekeeping precludes providing a deep intellectual challenge to the player, which is patently false.

As is implying that a game with a simpler, easier to manage rules set precludes providing a deep intellectual challenge.

Hm. I'm not reading this thread very carefully. My post was just a goof off.

Page 8. Remember, I posted this on page 8 and here we are now, six pages later and still at it.


This is fast approaching the absurdity of a certain ten-page thread on RPG.net, discussing whether the rolleyes smiley should be banned because some people felt offended by it.

Niche of a niche curios. You are not getting how small it truely is.

There is a big difference between number-crunching, pencil pushing, and rules memorization. I am a number cruncher to the bone. I can memorize rules as well, but that chews up a lot of time. It is also hard to find people that are willing to do that. By pushing the pencil I am refering not only to tracking large amounts of numbers by hand but also dealing with large disparate charts.

The people you are talking about are the miniature war gamers. For example WarHammer.

Streamlining only keeps pen & paper in the game. They have survived by improving. Their main competing point is the allowing per customer flexibility, social interaction, and niche settings on a budget. MMOG are cutting into the social interaction, though not face to face as much.

Trying to compete by large, complex, arcane rule text is even less viable because its very nature creates an entry barrier to your product. What you are talking about is competing with filling out income tax forms by hand. You really thing that is a viable long term market for growth, or even survival without heavily shrinking?

If there comes a day when the core market for pen and paper is pencil pushing, the English portion of it will be miniscule. Of that the genre that Shadowrun cuts out is going to be even smaller. The core problem is that intellectual property hugely benefits from economics scale. So the resources for development in such a market? No larger than a loosely organized group of volunteers assembling a patchwork ruleset where canon takes on new and interesting meanings.

Welcome to the future.

Agreed. Thanks for the help getting to this topic.

Careful, his account date is earlier than yours.

For all I've read in this thread (and yes, I've read it), you're back at square one, bashing each other over roughly the same purely subjective opinions you've held in this and several other threads. Sure, you've added some spice, but it's more of the same, over and over again.

Your problem, obviously, is you have too few posts on every page.

I would have it the "new version" was not a "new system".

What they did, was take a new system, colour it with some shadowrun genre
and call it version 4. They threw out many of the really great things that
made shadowrun what it was.

Another analogy, is going home to find that your mom who went in for a tummy tuck, come back a cold brainless/heartless cyborg. They took out the love and everything that was important and replaced it with pieces of some broken down toaster and called it an upgrade.

The trend of number of SR3 players, had many factors influencing it. There were factors from marketing to metaplot, to contributers being snubbed that had an effect on the game. SR4 was something that created a great deal of hype. You would have the same surge in players if sr4 was back-wards compatible with sr3 then you did with a new fancy system, why??? because there was marking hype and promotions behind it. There is a steady bell curve that all games experience, which they combat with new edition releases. Not that your choice of game is so much better than what we decide to play with

*Shakes cane* Quiet down you youngings!! Mines older!!


I've enjoyed the basic thrust of the conversation, but I have grown tired iof Brahm's nearly constant stream of insults.


I've played SR for a long time. And I hate the fact that I don't like - actually despise - SR4. I ocasionally find my self wondering if I didn't look at it close enough. So I go to a shop and pick it up. Or come here and read through one of these threads.

Then I remember why I hate it so much.

They destroyed a great game.


And they didn't have to. They could have fixed what needed fixing. Reprinted the rules as a second printing. Then put all their money and effort into a bitchin advertising and promotion campaign. Signs, posters, Flyers, contests. Printed a concurent campaign type book - like System crash. And printed a trilogy of concuring novels. Given SR the rebirth that they wanted to without destroying the game.

But thats just one oldtimers opinion.

sure, the two groups share a lot of their population. but just because someone is a wargamer doesn't mean they don't enjoy roleplaying--not number-crunching, but playing a character. not all of them do, of course, just as not all people who enjoy playing a character (actors, for instance) enjoy number-crunching. those wargamers who enjoy roleplaying aren't going to get much satisfaction from most wargames, are they?

you misunderstand, mainly because you see general shifts in gaming styles as improvements rather than the simple oscillations that they are. a comparable situation would be comics. back in the day, comics were horribly violent and sexual. then along came the Comics Code, a reactionary measure which locked comics into being black-and-white morality tales. in the past two decades, though, comics creators began straining at that bit, and have now largely broken free of it completely. i'm pretty sure that, at some point in the future, the pendulum will swing the other way, and comics won't be allowed to show real violence or sexuality again.

i'm not arguing that maintaing a complex ruleset would have been FanPro's best move, financially speaking. i just disagree that it would have been financial suicide to stick with a more complex game; SR3 had a strong following, both because of and in spite of its complexity.

You know I think the solution is simple.... we ask the mods to create an sr3 forum, and sr4 forum (which exists) and a general sr style forum which is system neutral. Sr4 trolls can stay there and snicker about how superior, and we sr3 troll can stay in the new forum and fix the game that we love.

Brahm you are spending alot of time belittling people. Please keep your caustic comments in your SR4 forum where we would not care to read them.

that has no bearing on my point (besides also being a purely subjective opinion). we are having a discussion about SR. we find value in this conversation. we are not, by and large, dropping the subject of discussion in favor of name-calling (though we've used plenty of name-calling in the course of making our various points). the fact is, there are plenty of threads on this forum that are far worse in the department of rehashing and flaming. why not go ask them to stop their bickering?

Actually, imagination keeps pen and paper in the game. MMOG's are cool, it lets you escape, and use problem solving, but it really doesn't let you escape, use your imagination, and visuallize a completely new world. It doesn't let you have the perfect control over your character, you are limited to basic actions.

There are two sides to this arguement. Yes, games do more for you, but there are people that like to think and do things for themselves, and people do get tired of the grind of mmogs. How many players here play neocron? It is true that the general populace is from the couch potatoe class. The thing about pen and paper is that it is portable. You do not have to worry about software, and still provides escapism.

By this do you mean sr4? or the phasing out of pen and paper? While entirely possible, I do have serious doubts. I still know many people with chess boards. Pen and paper offers a tangibility and social environment that will not be replaced, at least not until paperback books and chess pieces disappear.

Sorry but thats not gonna fly. Look at the money making powerhouse that's D&D. That's your complex, large and arcane rule text right there and it pretty much bleeds money.
Sure it's backed by Wizards, but they would never keep it on board if the numbers weren't in the deepest black.

As I said before, systems just become more complex as they go. Complexity says little about player appeal. I've been roleplaying for almost 13 years and I have never met a gamer who said "nah, I wont bother, this is too complex for me". (Yeah well, maybe a couple of people said that about rolemaster, but that one doesnt count. )
On the other hand, I have met a freakin lot of people who complained that the system of their choice is nowhere near specific enough on numerous rule situations.

The core audience for RPG products will always be people who already played before system X hits the market. I have worked in game shops for a while and I can count the situations where someone walked in to "find out about this roleplaying stuff" on one hand. The average customer had been invited to a game by friends and now wanted to pick up his own books. Having that in mind, you might as well make sure your system is solidly phrased and complex enough to appeal to your core audience but not so complex it scares away newbies. Thats for the second third and following books.

Finally, comparing the PC market to the PnP market is flawed because the audience at large is vastly different. You can say for sure that most PnP players have played or do play PC games at some point, but the opposite doesnt hold true. And the audience that doesnt even know what PnP is is vastly larger than the PnP one. PC games are geared for those people. For them, the mechanics behind the scenes are as hidden as what the heck a combat pool is and they couldnt care less.
It's two different markets that have few similarities. One provides predefined entertainment, interaction with a visual word and taking over a usually pregenerated role. The other gears toward people who use their imagination to create their own entertainment. One provides a fixed setting, the other a mechanical base to create your own settings.
I doubt a PC game creator will ever sit back and wonder "could players exploit this rule?" An MMO creator just might, but the average PC game creator will just say "who cares as long as they buy the game". Sad but true.

eh, i'd have to disagree with your example. d20 is not, by and large, very complex. the system itself is very simple; it only appears complex because you can plug lots and lots of things into that system. now, AD&D was complex, large, and arcane.

D&D has long since turned into what AD&D basically was. A system where not the rules, but the exceptions to them is the standart.

The basic system *was* relativly simple. But they have been throwing out a book a month since it launched and each book contains new rules. They didnt even make a clean cut with 3.5 but only said that "material that's not updated is still solid". Keeping track of the spells of one class for instance alone is a task that takes hours. Looking at the "big picture" of D&D one that takes days.

In my opinion, it's the perfect example of how to make money of a system. Take an old proven setting and update it. Ensure that you keep the basics intact but add enough things to ensure it's new. Then plan ahead for upgradability and just keep launching new material.
Note: That's a good example how to make money, not how to make a decent system. Although upgradeability is something that is integral for any good system. One thing that doesnt go well with fixed maxima.