What if people got dice pool/target number bonuses based on how cool and cinematic their actions were as opposed to penalties? Like, "I spin both MP5's and fire one in each hand." It would be a battle to see who could be cooler.

Define cinematic.

"In the style of the cinema." Usually the opposite of realistic.

What cinema? What movement? What style? Blackhawk Down, the first fifteen minutes of Saving Private Ryan, The Proposition, and The Bourne Supremacy are cinema. I suspect that isn't what he has in mind. Cinematic is the wrong word to use.

John Woo.

Hong Kong Blood Opera, Wushu, or the Bad 80's Action Movie Of Your Choice would be a good place to start.

Would positive dice-pool or target number modifiers work, though?

Because this is all about subjective style, making explicit rules is at best difficult and at worst useless. But, that said, pool is a better approach. Target numer modifiers are usually too extreme to hand out casually.

Steal exalted's stunt system. If you take an action that is more defined that 'i shoot/hit him' you get one bonus die. Sample one die stunt "I kick him in the 'nads"

If your action includes a more detailed description, or includes a description of the environment, add two dice. Sample two die stunt: "Running through the puddles of blood, my foot leaves a trail of scarlet droplets as I kick him in the 'nads"

If your two die stunt description makes everyone at the table say "whoa!" or "ouch!" or some other expression of approval, then it's worth three dice.

Heh, John Woo style.

"Flipping through the air in an improbable mobius leap, I point my dual wielded MP5Ks at the bad guy and discharge them both in full auto while my barrels wiggle all over the place yet my rounds hit their mark in an outrageous insult to gamers who like realism everywhere and a glorious tribute to those barrel-wiggling moments we know and love from movies across the world."

There's nothing wrong with playing that way though. Did you miss the fact that it's pretty much a given that in a "cinematic game" realism isn't as important as the style?

I am totally doing this.

IIRC Seventh Sea awarded bonuses for suitably cinematic swashbuckling. It worked quite well sometimes, although the environment had to be pretty well detailed for best effect.

For a game about people with computers implanted in their heads, wizards, and dragons, SR is surprisingly realistic. My biggest example is how universally bad of an idea shooting two guns at the same time is. This runs very counter to the cinematic style of RPGs I've seen lately. Its refreshing, but some players might want to inject a little bit of cinematicism into SR, and I wouldn't blame them for that.

Dread Polack

My games usually feature a mix. Mostly realistic, but with occasional cinematic events (almost always the result of player asking to John Woo it up, me assigning a ridiculous target number, them succeeding anyway ).

There was a game I was co-GMing (well, trading GMing is more correct) in, and during one session the dual-weilding pistol adept gunned a Yamaha Rapier, which he had no specific skill in riding, toward two Ancients on their bikes that had stopped up the street a ways about five feet apart. He hauled toward them, and at the "perfect moment", leapt off the bike into a straight-body (like a diver takes on, I don't know what else to call it) backflip, drew both pistols, put a killing round into each one's head as he flew over them upside down with arms extended in an upside down 'Y', and landed on the bike, bringing it to a sliding halt past the two now falling bikers.

It was something like "high TN bike test using reaction, high TN athletics test, high TN pistols test, high TN athletics test, high TN bike test using reaction" and he pulled it off anyway. It was great.

Outside little steam-blowoff moments like that though, we stick to slightly more realistic play.

There was another, where the same "no bike skill" character managed to drop grenades (causing 6 of 13 chasing Ancients to wreck), donkey kick his bike up, kick it into neutral and spin it around, hit the ground rolling backwards, draw both pistols and gun down a few more ancients (causing the remaining to break pursuit), and wheelie the bike back around and take off again.

Yeah. Mmmmm, realism.

It's funny, this type of thing was definitely the exception to the rule (and might not have happened if I was running), but it's what sticks out in your memory the best.

That's because it's so freakin' unlikely it HAS to stick out. Like that one wizard in an AD&D game of mine making a brilliant ride check to kick-start his horse and jump over a fallen comrade, succeeding in a Strength check to grab another who was about to be devoured by a carrion crawler and pull her on his horse, and manage another ride check to make his horse jump said crawler and get them all to safety. We all watched with wide eyes as he pulled that stunt off.

That's the stuff that simply sticks out because nobody thinks it possible.

Firing guns akimbo upside down mid-somersault off a bike taking out two guys at once.




-karma

Yup, that was the exact scene that inspired it.

Damn what an awesome movie.

I'm at work, but I'm gonna guess y'all're watching Equilibrium.

Yes, I was talking to you. And you're still missing the point.

The point was that he wants to reward cinematic action by making things easier (in other words, giving bonuses).

Your post ignores the fact that we have already stated that "realism" is not at all factoring into what he wants to do.

Thus, there's really no point to illustrate, because he/we know(s) that this flies in the face of both "realism" and the default rules.

Nobody is saying there "should" be anything. He's saying he wants there to be. Big difference.

Mmm, Christian Bale. I'd go buy Equilibrium right now if it wasn't such a cold yucky night....

I think there's something to be said for gamers that go out of their way to make the game as realistic as possible since the system allows for it, to a certain extent. On the other hand, if there's a group of people that want to have their players pull off ridiculous stunts at key moments, there shouldn't be any reason to deny anybody that opportunity so long as everybody understands that they're taking a step away from core SR rules.

Dice pool modifiers would be all right, but the 7th Sea mechanic that was mentioned awards drama dice for the successful completion of something that was 'really freaking cool.' Of course, these drama dice can then be used to help the character perform even more ridiculously amazing stunts, earn more drama dice, and so on. I'm not sure if it was canon, but our 7th Sea GM converted leftover drama dice into experience at the end of each act.

In SR terms, this might translate into an Edge/karma pool die (in a separate pool that disappears at the end of the game, of course) as a reward for said ridiculously fandamntabulous stunts. The bonus edge dice could be converted into karma at the end of the run as well to encourage players to be as creative and outlandish as possible with their actions. I don't know that this is a good system per se, but it's an approximation of what another system offers and might work if players are looking for something a bit more "Hollywood" than what they're getting right now.

House ruling is fun.

<Edited because not everyone has converted to SR4. Karma pool and Edge as rewards fill a similar, if not identical role in this proposed house rule.>

I think my games are cinematic enough.

Katana Adept drops out of the ceiling, landing on guard and hacking bits off. He spins and catches two more with killing blows. He races out of the room, silent as death... and gets cold-cocked with a rifle butt by the large angry man outside the door. Who then shoots him in the head. Repeatedly.

No one said it had to be a SERIOUS action movie

Oh, and 7th Sea with the right group is Errol Flynn incarnate. It is awesome. No swash is left unbuckled.

lawndart

I realize that the thread is just about combat, but about "cinemizing" other interactions? The clever quip that adjusts social tests, for example. I'd love to hear if someone got a bonus to a build/repair test 'cause they described it with style.

That'd be pretty cool...

Or, alternately, you could just actually play Feng Shui or something. What aspect of the Shadowrun game world can't be covered by the Feng Shui rules-set? Why hodge-podge together a rules system that's meant to be dangerous and gritty alongside a rules system that's custom tailored for the cinematic, over the top, game you want... when you could just use the rules system for the over the top game you want in the first place?

Because that'd be too easy, and well...it's Emo you're talking about.

Ever had a GM penalize you for trying to colour things up?

Me: "Since I'm crouched down, I'm going to dart in and pull his legs out from under him, smacking the back of his head on the tiles."

Him: "Okay, that's a grappling test. Since you've targeted his legs, it's a called shot. No successes and you'll end up prone. One or two net and you can make an opposed strenght test to knock him over. More than two successes and you succeed, but I'll subtract two successses for the sake of damage."

Me: "Never mind. How about I just 'unarmed combat him.'"

Him: "Fine."

Otherwise, he was actually a really good GM.