I don't understand. What does a variable TN have to do with it? (And yes, no matter what it says, it's a variable TN system in practice.) Variable vs fixed TN really doesn't mean anything when it comes to quality game mechanics.

I admit that the loss of "freebie points" is something I don't like about nWoD. At the same time, it's much harder to push the boundaries, because the boundaries are much closer and tighter. nWoD might be a good example of overdoing it.

Still, nWoD allows for greater overall character flexibility than SR4 does, for two reasons. The first is that while SR4 allows for finer granularity in character creation, that doesn't translate into a wider array of characters-- just different fine details on the same ones. The second is this: Shadowrun assumes that your chaaracter is going to be a shadowrunner. Try and make a character outside of that concept, and it starts to fall flat. nWoD doesn't make that sort of assumption, and supports a wider array of character concepts as a result.

In both cases, they really look inflexible when compared to a "generic toolkit" game, such as Savage Worlds or GURPS. Generic systems allow things that both systems don't even think about; ideally, you can create just about any character for any genre using them. If we were to port an urban fantasy setting into a universal system, how well would SR4 stand up?

Like D20Modern's Urban Arcana or Cyberpunk, Rifts, GURPS Technomancer, GOO's very cool Ex-Machina or the new Cyberpunk3.0? Right now those are the competition.

No matter how popular (and no matter how much I personally like them, "generic toolkit" games are not). SR4 like any edition of SR just doesn't compete for the same market as "universal systems", nor does it want to. "Standing up" to is not an issue. SR4 is aimed at a significantly different audience. For the vast majority of current RPGers, the closest they want to get to universal systems is D20. They're considered too much work. And speaking from a business perspective they just lack the type of fanbase to translate to sustained and consistent sales (GURPS is the best example of this- each product sells on a case by case basis).

Despite having to compete with a long-awaited Cyberpunk3.0, Shadowrun 4 has already gone into third printing and is continuing to sell at a rate similar to SR3 on release (in a very different market). SR4 set out to renew the Shadowrun brand, update the setting, bring back lost players and captivate much needed new blood - it has done all that and out sold expectations (it's no WotC or WW, but I'm really looking forward to see this year's RPG industry estimates, last year FanPro was neck and neck with Steve Jackson and AEG for third, this year it's likely to have beat both despite Spycraft2).

The upcoming core books will prove decisive in whether or not SR4 has staying power, but right now the outlook is very positive - in large part because the revamped mechanics offer the right balance between abstraction and fiddly bits the average gamer wants. Neither too simple nor too detailed.

Such players are rare.

Gold. Pure gold.

Aiee, I am cursed! And yet, still pleased.

hehehe, savage species. That brings back memories. Its a tweeks dream. back when I played DnD I was banned from using that book too. That was after I brought a DM to tears with my feral multiheaded learan, pyro, half copper dragon (body is completly immune to damage, only necks are vulnerable. if you cut off a head two more grows back unless you seal it with 10 points of fire or acid damage. its then Immune to fire and acid damage so it actually gets more powrful to more damage you do to it).

They sound like fun players, I'm glad to game worked well in pratise. Personally I've always been concerned about monofillament whips. Have you any expeirence with them in the new system?

Pfft. Vampiric troll half-dragon (Black) with the elemental template (Fire). He's simply immune to damage (and a lot of other things) and has plenty of offensive nastiness at his disposal too. I bet he even looks neat.

And just like in every other RPG: Just because the character can be made doesn't mean it can be played.

Hey, that's kind of a Jesse Jackson/Johnnie Cochran catch phrase. It rhymes and everything.

*shudder* believe me, you're not the only one that's had to ban that book.

Yeah, the whole thing where characters pay one level for every hit die of monsterness (before accounting for special abilities), and then pays a level for every half-way decent ability they have means that monstrous characters end up hilariously weak for their level. A 20th level elven wizard is a 20th level character, but a monster that's a 20 hit die fairythat casts as a 20th level wizard (which is to say: a 20th level elven wizard that happens to come from a monster book) would be a 38th level character.

Playing a stone giant you're so jacked that you don't even get XP for defeating a copy of yourself in combat.

Even the aforemention super combos aren't good. A Half-Black Dragon Fire Element Troll is supposedly a 20th level character and has a BAB of +5. He literally can't do anything to opponents of his level. He also only has about a 100 hit points, so even though he only takes subdual damage from any damaging attack, he'll just be cleared aside into unconciousness at the start of every combat. Plus, he can still be killed by all the death effects which at that level are commonplace (as well as good old fashioned strangulation - he can be killed by dropping him into a bucket of water once you knock him out).

---

Savage Species needs to be banned because otherwise people will make cool looking characters that are so underpowered that they will get the entire team killed.

-Frank

You missed the "vampiric" part. No subdual damage, drowning, or death effects. And he just needs to make touch attacks to kill people.

But eh, we massively digress.

You're right, I did. That's because Vampiric is a template that can't be applied to elementals, and even if it could it would cost 8 more levels and make him Undead which means that he wouldn't have a Con score and his Hit Points would drop to 47 and his Regeneration wouldn't work any more.

He'd be screwed so badly that he wouldn't make it far in an 8th level party and he'd be expected to play in the sandbox with an Epic Level Druid.

Yes we do.

-Frank

they are SINless. insurance is the least of their problems...

While I don't have any numbers on this, DriveThruRpg currently lists CP3.0 as their third top seller, versus SR4 in 11th place. IIRC, SR4 never managed to crack the top 3, so I'd say that CP3.0 has a better start out of the gate. Like you said, only time will tell. Core books always sell the best, it's the supplements that make or break the game.

I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure SR4 made the Top 3 (I know for sure that at one point we actually had SR4 and System Failure in the Top 5) and may even have gone to number 1 for a couple of weeks. BTW - If that's your reference, CP3.0 just dropped to number 6 while SR4 held at 11th... and you might be surprised to see what slipped into the top 3.

However, ask any industry person or distributor and they'll tell you online/pdf sales are not representative of the market and in fact favor niche games which are hard to find at the FLGS. The best indication of SR4's popularity are the fact that its selling almost as fast as SR3 did in FASA's heyday and that not only are numerous fans coming back to a game they had dropped but new fans are coming on board too (just take a look around this board).

That describes five out of the seven players in my group.

That describes the remaining two.

I'm not an industry expert, and I don't have any real numbers. What I do know is that anything advertised at asle prices in big red letters on the main page is going to sell better than other products, especially within the first few days of release. Besides which, that includes *my* purchase of "On the Run"-- I just got it because I had enough affiliate credits, and it was on sale. I'll bet that it drops off almost as quickly.

[Edit] Besides which, I haven't even started reading the damn thing, and already I hate it. I'm old fashioned enough to prefer hardcopy to monitors, and I've crashed my computer four times trying to print the damn thing out. Right now, I don't care if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, I'm about ready to drop-kick the whole fricking thing across the room. I might be able to give it a fair reading later, but right now, it's just a screaming pile of digital dung to me.

After talking to the folks at my FLGS, Shadowrun isn't a hot seller here in Seattle. Gary's Games is probably the #1 game store around, and I think he's sold all of 2 copies since it came out. I don't know what the comparison is-- that might be really excellent, in the big picture-- but it just doesn't sound good to my inexpert eye.

I do know that distributors don't typically keep numbers on retail sales, though. They just track how many have been shipped, and assume that they've been sold at the retail level. A better indicator would be how many special requests have gone out, but I don't have any way of getting to those numbers.

As for people coming back... I've seen a number of people drop out of Shadowrun, or refuse to go to SR4, as I've seen new players come aboard. And once the shininess of a new edition wears off, that's when we see how well a system really holds up. You pointed that out quite correctly. I think-- no, I *know*-- that a lot of the "new and returning" players will drop off again before too long. How much of an improvement remains after that point is the true test.

That's more of a computer issue than the PDF. I think you're anger is being directed at the wrong thing.

As for one store being a representative sample, meh. Even if it is the "#1"
[Edit] For instance in my area not very many copies have been sold either, but that's mainly cause D&D dominates, with a little bit of Exalted on the side.

I think through just browsing the web I've heard more apprehension about CP v3 then I have any system.

This isn't the only time it's happened, though. SR4 not only crashed my computer during an attempted printout, it managed to demolish my copy of Acrobat Reader. I took it to Kinko's, and it crashed *their* systems eight times. It ended up taking a print shop over three days to get it out, sending out only a few pages at a time.

I was informed then that it had something to do with the "layering" in the SR4 pdf format; apparently it's highly detailed, which makes for nice, pretty graphics. However, it's impossible to flatten correctly, and makes printing a nightmare. I know I'm not the only one, either-- I've seen multiple complaints about the same thing on these boards.

None of this has anything to do with the quality of the actual writing, of course. But if I can't actually *get* to the writing, it may as well be the worst pile of crap on the planet from my point of view. I'm certainly going to tell everyone I know to swear off FanPro pdf's until they start putting out printer-friendly versions; this is just ridiculous.

Same in the Atlanta area. I had to keep tabs on the four closest gaming stores; I finally scored the second-to-last copy in the one store that didn't sell out within 48 hours.

Wholly agreed, but some people don't have the same good sense that you do, DJ.

You misspelled "ironic."

oh, there very much is something else at work, here. i don't hate the game. James doesn't hate the game. neither does Cain, or Critias, or any of the other people who post here with negative opinions of SR4.

we hate the rules. i love SR. it's an interesting game--a unique game, or very nearly so. i love the setting, i love the atmosphere, i love the feel of the game. but i really, really hate the new rules because i feel it really, really alters all of that for the worse. as many faults as i find in the SR3 rules (and there are many), they work better--i feel--for the game than the SR4 rules.

I completely sympathize. That's how I felt about SR3, and that's why I ultimately stopped playing it. That's why you don't see me in the SR3 forums; I exist only here, in SR4.

So as not to make this a "SR3 vs SR4" post, I'll relate an identical situation that I have with Star Wars.

I'm of the generation that saw New Hope in the theatres as a little kid. The setting was awesome to my young mind and the Star Wars franchise was perhaps the biggest contributor to my eventual status as a "nerd." It was the first time I had seen the sci-fi genre presented in a cool way.

As I grew up and became aware of RPGs, I naturally sought out a good Star Wars RPG. At last, I had my chance to interact within the setting in a more detailed way than slapping together little plastic lightsabers. I tried each new iteration of the tabletop game that I could find. A few years ago, I gave six months of my life to the (ultimately self-destructive) Star Wars: Galaxies MMORPG.

But ya know, none of those games did it for me. I found their game mechanics lacking in ways that I just couldn't accept, so I eventually just stopped playing them. I still love the setting, and I still keep up with the fiction as best I can; but there hasn't been a game out there yet that I felt did the setting justice. So I've resigned myself to watching the movies and reading the books since that's what's most satisfying to me.

Am I disappointed? Sure. Am I going to hang out on the SWG forums and gripe? Nope. I tried for a while (while I was still playing it), hoping for the longshot that it would prompt constructive change, but it predictably didn't. I had to give it a shot, at least, ya know? But I knew when to just let it go.

So I moved on. Other fish in the sea, and all.

Then please continue to play SR3. If someone is holding a gun to your head demanding that you play SR4, wait until they go to the bathroom and quickly call 911.

Providing feedback to the developers is very useful, but -- as I mentioned above with SWG -- at one point you've got to realize that even the most insightful critiques will eventually sound like background noise after a while.

It's not that I think SR4 is the holiest of the holies or anything; it's just that I know getting indignant over a new edition is ultimately futile if there's a perfectly serviceable previous edition available for those who prefer it.

And worst case? Just read the novels and keep hoping for the movie.

They must have sold more than that, or I account for 100% of the sales.

Here in Indianapolis it flew off the shelves. I didn't even see the first printing, and I check on the local stores about once a week. My friend and I picked up two copies of the second printing, but I think they're out of that now, too.