*sigh* Then I can see a great deal of work in my future. I don't wish to deny anyone else the opportunity to have these characters in their games if they want. But I've got the impression that there are quite a lot of people that dislike the idea of technomancers and for that reason I thought there might be some possibility that GanPro could bear this in mind and take a marginally more lego-like approach to them in the game. As I metioned there is a very successful example of this in the new Eberron setting with Psionics.

Just for information my reasons for disliking Technomancers are none of the ones that you listed. My dislike stems from the following:

I started playing with SR1 and reading the original Secrets of Power trilogy. One of the themes was Magic vs. Technology and that stuck with me. I have always liked the frisson between the two.

My second reason is a little less personal and that is that I feel magic already has too great a role in Shadowrun. An integral part of the setting, yes. But to the extent that non-magical characters and PCs are second class citizens (both in terms of power and interest), I feel it is too much. And now we find that the division is one-sidedly broken and magic is taking over the machine world too. Hacking and the matrix was a something that mundanes had to themselves. Although Samurai were somewhat overshadowed by ever more powerful magicians in terms of damage dealing, quickened increase attributes, armour etc. and adepts could rival them, there were still riggers and hackers et al. Technomancer fluff changes this, making non-magical characters truly second best. It's that balance that is thrown out for me and why I don't have technomancers in the game.

As I said, I don't want to deny others the chance to play these characters, and I understand that some of their designers may think they're very cool. But it's a lot of work for me to start unintegrating all this stuff from my game as it is for anyone else that doesn't want this. I don't want to see the matrix become something akin to metaplanes, or something that magicians can have a "true" understanding of or connection to, whilst the hacker is some unaware dabbler. As we have so little information on the new matrix or how to run it, I'm concerned that the groundwork for it is being laid in Technomancer terms rather than Hacker terms. The ordering of the books suggests this and now you have too.

And just to emphasize my point above, I'm not so much talking about rules as I am about fluff. Balance issues are a concern, but it's the one-sided encroachment of magic into technology's domain that bothers me.

I'll never have a group like this.

Hopefully.

I will repeat what has been said elsewhere on several ocassions. Technomancers are not Awakened or magci, nor do they use magic in any fashion — at least not in the sense magic is referred to in Shadowrun. In fact, their abilities preclude (and will continue to exclude) the use of Magic.

People are reading a lot into the fact that there are numerous parallels in mechanics, when neither the mechanics nor the fluff (what there is of it) supports the fact that Resonance is Magic - in fact quite the opposite.

It's worked fine for me so far with SR3.

It's more like most people are not able to wrap their head around the fact that TMs use magic that is no magic.
Like nano-weapons that defeat the laws of physics.

Let's just say that everything is alright and there is no such thing as the Technocracy.

Eh. When I say "Magic" it is shorthand for "And then a miracle happens."

As for the rules... Well, there is quite a bit about that I can go into going back to the rules that were written for Otaku by the people who wrote RA:S and Brainscan and later became things like Submersion/Fading. But I'd rather not hash that shit out because it's not important. Convenience is an adequate reason.

Yeah - the similarity of rules. Also the way they interface directly with computers and microchips just by thinking loudly.

Well, if it isn't magic, this is going to have to be one Hell of an explanation. I await with interest.

Sooo, like theyve got an infection acting like some sort of software based ASIST?

YMMV, of course

Are all TMs childs? Don't think so. Otakus, yes, but TMs?

On a similar note, I can now say from personal experience that combat in SR4 is neither simpler, nor less time-consuming, than combat in SR3. I did find the placement of Defense Modifiers to be nothing but inconvenient, btw.

But, yeah. Everyone I play with is a rules lawyer. It's one of the more interesting artifacts of only playing online in a collaborative fiction setting/system.

I am in the distinct minority (majority) that find your constant psychobabble midly retarded, but majorly annoying.

You don't like it, we get it. You need to move on, this 12 year old PAY ATTENTION TO ME bullshit is tiresome.

Especially since we can't just skip threads you start since you infect plenty of threads, hijacking them, like this one.

hoo... Wow. That's um... interesting.

Ummmm, I started this particular thread, mostly to rant about not getting into the FanPro seminar I wanted to see.

I've found the turns this discussion has taken fascinating, especially as I am currently playing a TM. And, no, I don't mind the curmudgeons. Everybody's entitled to their own opinions. What I do mind are when it degenerates to personal pot-shots.

So, hijack away, my friends! I'm having fun!

Combat flows not faster in our games, but we gratned that to the fact that we have to learn the various modifiers of the dice pool.


It's interesting that all your online gaming buddies are rules lawyer, when on the other hand you have to trust them when they're rolling the dices (or the GM if he does it for you).

...?

We've got an on-line die roller. It's not like we toss a bunch of d6's in real life (or claim to) and then post the results (or claim to). You punch in your die pool, punch in your TN, and a random number generator does all the hard work.

It may be a nice DB system, but the Java Index and Chat are... less than perfect.
But then again, it works... kinda.

SL, you mean?

'Cause me an' MFB are chillin' in chat right now. So I doubt the server's down.

We had a new guy on there with us, dunno if he was a DSer or not, but it seemed to work for him (plus MFB's test account). Only thing I can think of that'll sometimes give a server down error (aside from the server being down) is occasionally it'll pop up the error message if you're hasty on the login typing. Did you give it a sec once the login java popped up, and let the news-flash on the left hand side start typing a little? It's a weird little thing that doesn't even go wrong every time -- but from time to time, if you log in before that message starts, it'll get buggy on ya.

For the most part, general chat's just for hangin' out (and prodding people to post, I dunno how many times I've typed "ding" to let someone know I was done on a thread and someone else could post), but it is possible to create private game rooms (as part of a folder otherwise full of scenario/location pages), and even to roll dice in chats if you want.

SL James and I ran a quick "let's throw some dice and see what happens in SR4" sort of pseudo-combat the other day, in fact, that was probably ten times faster since we used chat for it than it would've been otherwise.