No problem:

Here's the cost efficiency of various things in Karma/BP:

Attributes 5-6: 139% (18 Karma/25 BP)
Attributes 1-6: 108% (60 Karma/65 BP)
Attributes 3-6: 100% (45 Karma/45 BP)
Specializations: 100% (2 Karma/2 BP)
Skills 0-4: 73% (22 Karma/16 BP)
Spells: 60% (5 Karma/3 BP)
Skills 0-6: 55% (44 Karma/ 24 BP)
Positive Qualities: 50% (10 Karma/5 BP)
Skills 4-6: 36% (22 Karma/8 BP)
Skills 5-6: 33% (12 Karma/4 BP)
Skills 6-7: 29% (28 Karma/8 BP)
Complex Forms 0-6: 27% (22 Karma/6 BP)

That those numbers aren't the same is a sign of imbalance in chargen vs. character advancement. That the efficiency numbers can differ by a factor of 2 is something that most people would accuse of being "exceptionally unbalanced".

In that, if one person gets literally twice as many build points for the same Karma - that's obviously bad, right? That can happen pretty easily.

Would you prefer it if I said hat th Skill costs are too high? They are equally valid statements, and refer to the same mathematically proven fact. My addressing of the problem was to reduce the cost of skills. Serbitar's was to increase the price of Attributes - both are entirely reasonable fixes to the problem once you understand it.

Here's the problem:

+1 Agility is just like +1 Close Combat skill except that it's better. In every way it is better. It adds to every dice pool of Close Combat skills and it also adds to your Firearms, and your Infiltration, and your Palming and your Gymnastics (non-combat), and your mom. It's a very versatile attribute and it does everything that a point of Close Combat does and more, no exceptions.

And yet, the BP cost is the same. That means that a starting character can increase their Agility or their Close Combat with the same points, and the first character will have bigger dice pools in many tasks and won't have smaller dice pools in any task -that's appalling. And in character advancement, adding +1 to Agility costs new rating x3 and adding a point to Close Combat costs new rating x5. So the Agility (which as noted is better) costs less to increase so long as the two are even vaguely in the same range (increasing Close Combat from 2 to 3 costs the same as increasing Agility from 4 to 5, and Agility is still at least as god as Close Combat in all ways and better in numerous ways).

Pick your solution (more expensive Attributes is pretty much your only option for a Karma focused fix, while Skill cost reduction works fine for a BP focused fix). The problem is blatant and extremely easy to identify: column A has everything that is in Column B and it has extra stuff and it costs less. It's that blatant.

James

Yet it works out for various reasons, so is actually balanced in the big picture....which is the 'balance' that matters. Why? No, it's not just because of the flatter power curve SR has.

For example Qualities are quite limited during chargen, so they have extra costs there. Especially for those big ticket ones. Plus post chargen Qualities seem to be ment to be big, life-changing things. So efficency obviously isn't really a concern. That you can pick up negative ones without getting a karma payout underlines that.

The high end of Skills looks really sweet...until you factor in that you are very limited in what you can take with them, and to get the 6 to 7 jump you need to get the Quality that chews up a lot of that Positive Quality cap.

Also to trying cashing in on the cheaper Skills during chargen puts a lot of pressure on Attributes, implants (some of which are very cheap Attributes if you can afford the Essense), and other goodies. And sure Attributes are cheaper post-chargen (unless it is heavily metahuman boosted), but if you skimp on them too much you can run into survival issues, low Knowledge Skill issues, etc.

The only one that's really an issue as far as I can see (and I'm just starting to go into actual play with a Technomancer, so I'm not sure how it all shakes out) are the Complex Forms, which are handled just like SR3 Skills were. At first blush it is likely to require serious addressing for using a BeCKS type system. Further complicated by the number of starting CF are limited by your Logic attibute.

....when starting from flawed assumptions, which you do. Once again measuring trees and forgetting where you are in the forest.

He has a problem with the majority of the low range of a dice pool usually being purchased primarily by buying up the Attribute, mid-range being a mix of higher Attributes and the lower end of Skills, and the top range of an Ability typically being bought by increasing Skill although sometimes a good mix of Attribute in that because of the influence of chargen.

Basically the assumption is that if you aren't buying Attributes and Skills at the same time for a given Ability it isn't 'balanced'. It is like that infamous Archie Bunker scene where he's telling Meathead to take a bite of potato first, then a bite of meat, then a bite of veggies and keep rotating through while eating because eating each of them a little at a time is what makes it a "balanced" meal.

I don't get it.

You default to Attribute if you do not have the Skill, so if you got no Skill, your dice pool is dependent on your Attribute.

Frank's argument - At chargen it is better to buy up Attributes than Skills because Attributes are applicable almost all of the time. And it costs less to boost Attributes post-chargen than Skill Groups for the same range. Is that it?

Blakkie:

EDIT: Becos I b stoopid.

It's Meathead. Archie Bunker is from the All In The Family sitcom, not the Archie Comic Book.

No, see he's got two complaints that actually in play partially offset each against each other. One is that you want to buy up your Skills at chargen, and buy them up as high as possible, because they have a better BP to karma ratio with higher skills than lower skills and even better yet than with Attributes.

The other is that you generally want to buy up Attributes before Skills/Skill Groups (after chargen) because it's a cheaper per karma way to get dice for the dice pools over a large number of dice pools.

His underlying assumption is both that you have to have Skills and Attributes bought in more equal measures at the same time (why? to what end?) and he also fails to account for having to play with a set of abilities while gaining the karma to cash in on the imbalances. I guess because it's hard to hang an exact number on it thus making "proof" difficult and messy? *shrug* Unfortunately just disregarding it entirely invalidates any claim of proof of something meaningful.

Rob Reiner as Michael 'Meathead' Stivic. It's ok, I'm old enough to remember seeing many of the episodes during their original run. Although I will admit my memories are all 25+ years old since I don't recall ever watching reruns in syndication, I'm not likely to forget the association of Reiner with "Meathead" anytime soon.

EDIT: Did Fortune guess where your confusion came from? That never even occured to me.

Caps are used when a system breaks down. It shows the weakness of a system. A creation system with 5xNew Attribute Karma Costs does not have this weakness. It does not need the "maximum number of karma spent on attributes" cap.

This is only the case after attribtues are maxed. I do not want everybody to max his attributes. I want to have variety.

Because you find them inconviently factual?

Er, once again no. Because it is actually very rare for Shadowrunners to raise each of their abilities equally. Why? Because the game encourages some focus in a member's role on the team.

Then I suggest you stop playing after a number of years of weekly sessions where there hasn't been any character turnover.

But a cap is an artifical and very obstrusive balance tool. Like a step function. A well balanced and natural system consists of smooth functions.

Furtheremore: The BP AND Karma system is imbalanced, because it punishes some kind of building strategy (balanced ones) and rewards others (min-maxing).
That is bad game design. Especially, as there is no need of two different systems. Both Frank an me have prooven that a BP-only System and a Karma-only System (depending on the build philosophy you prefer) does work very well.

Actually it is not totally true. Defaulting has a penalty. Therefore spending 10 BPs for Skill 1 is equivalent to spending 20 BPs for Attribute +2. In fact some skills do not Default at all, so no matter how good your Attributes are, you are nothing without the skill.

The second part of the problem is? PC with low Att but high skill is going to be better in the long term, but most campaigns do not have the lengths to see it happen, so high Attribute and low skill is better? I think the problem of high Att and low skill is curbed by the cap in the amount of BP you can spend in Attributes. So at best you'd have PCs spending 1/2 their BPs on Attributes, and that is not enough to max all Attributes. Consequently you'd have a mix of high and low Attributes (unless you are deliberately keeping them all equal).

A PC with low Att but high Skill (as you say, Attributes are a better deal with Karma and affects more dice pools) starts slower than a PC with high Att but low Skills. But due to the karma efficiency of Att, the slower guy accelerates faster than the high Attribute guy who is faster off the blocks. I think this is the trade-off, be better at first or better later.

A minor one. I've been playing over a year and could count the number of extended tests i've made on one hand and have fingers to spare.


I find it amusing that skills have to be houseruled. I find it more amusing that some people can't even see the problem.

Maybe its because of one of the following reasons:

There is no problem
It is to insignificant for them to realise it
They know about it, but dont care

That depends on your style of play then I suppose. We use them often, and it makes a difference. Not much difference in combat, but social skills, info gathering, availability, big differences.

I think I'm going to hav to start using smaller words. Or perhaps take it out of the realm of the theoretical and into the concrete. One or the other.

Anyway, imagine an extremely simplified case: a case where you only have Agility and Intuition to worry about and you're trying to make a Shadowrunner. You want to be able to sneak, find clues, shoot a gun, swing a stun baton. You're a ninja and a detective - the classic Shadowrunning mundane.

OK, you're going to need two attributes:

• Agility
• Intuition

And you're going to need three Skill Groups:

• Firearms
• Close Combat
• Stealth

And you're going to need two Stand Alone Skills:

• Tracking
• Perception

First off, let's min/max a character for starting play:

We give him an Intuition and Agility of 5 (80 BP) and we give him a 1 in all three skill groups (30 BP) and both singular skills (8 BP). We've spent 118 BP.

He has a dicepool of 6 in all tasks before circumstantial modifiers. That's professional grade, so we're cooking.

And uh... let's min/max a character for the long run:

We've taken Economics, so we know our comparative advantage backwards and forwards. We're going to start with an Intuition and Agility of 1 (0 BP) because it's amazingly cheaper to buy it up later. We'll get all three skill groups at 3 (90 BP), Tracking at 3 (12 BP), and Perception at 4 (16 BP). We've spent 118 BP.

We... suck. Our starting dice pool is only 4 dice in everything but perception (where it is still only 5) - that's gogang bullshit.

And yes, it's that fucking stark. But wait! Comparative advantage kicks in, right? Buying Attributes with Karma is even more of a no brainer with Karma than it is with BP. And the first character, the one who can actually perform tasks at a professional level can only buy one point in each attribute before he hits the caps. So where does it actually happen?

Well, the first thing either of them are going to do with their first 22 Karma is buy Specializations because they are totally sweet, and they cancel, so we'll leave them out of the equation on both sides. Their next 36 Karma is earmarked to raise attributes, because they aren't fucking stupid. That takes our first character to a whopping 7 in all his dice pools and his natural attribute maximum. It takes our long-term visionary up to a 3 in both Agility and Intuition - giving him a Perception Dicepool of 7 (yeah!), but still leaving him 1 point behind in every other category.

And then our character who started out better is going to have to buy actual skills. Purchasing a +1 to each skill group and stand alone skill will cost a whopping 38 Karma, which will be enough for Skill Man to raise his Agility to 5 and his Intuition to 4. At this point, Skill Man has equalled the other character in everything but Shadowing, Palming, and Tracking (where he still lags behind 1 die).

And of course, Skill Man will be able to raise his attributes up to six before Attribute Man can get all of his skill groups up to 3. And thus, Skill Man catches up and passes Attribute man on.... 142 Karma.

So if you're willing to start life as a Go Ganger instead of a Professional, you'll be slightly ahead once you have 142 Karma under your belt. You won't be ahead in every category or anything, but you'll seriously roll 1 more die on Perception, Blades, Clubs, and Unarmed tests. Whoopy-do.

So, anyone get an SR4 character with 142 Karma yet? Any takers on a guesstimate of how many Shadowrun characters ever survive until they get 142 Karma? Because for those people, purchasing skills at chargen is a mildly good deal - in the simplified case where you only need to worry about 2 attributes (in the case where you also need Charisma and Reaction and Logic you can increase the payoff point proportionately to about 300 Karma).

-Frank

Your attempts to make me do an exasperated slow burn are futile because I'm on the other side of a series of tubes and you can't even see th expressions on my face.

It's really simple:

• The Karma costs aren't balanced with the BP costs.
• Attributes are objectively superior to skills.
• The comparative advantage of purchasing up skills at chargen, while real, is insufficient to warrant actually doing that at the expense of attributes given a prospective campaign that will run a finite amount of time (say fram now until the oil runs out and rising waters destroy Florida).

Thus, raising the comparative cost of attributes or lowering the comparative costs of skills is a no-brainer. Further, folding BP into KJarma or folding Karma into BP are both more balanced and no less flavorful than the rules presented in the Big Basic Book.

And because of that the 4th edition players guide will probably run a set of optional rules surprisingly similar to Serbitar's house rules, my house rules or both - and I fully expect these options to be as popular as the Point System creation rules presented in the SR2 Shadowrun Companion. So much so that one or the other will hopefully be the standard rules in 5th edition or maybe 6th.

You know, learning happens.

-Frank

I will accept the first 2. Karma costs are not balanced with BP costs because as far as I am concerned they are on 2 different scales used at different times and quite simply, I do not think that they should be equal or balanced to each other. I am not arguing against Attributes being superior to skills either. What I can't get is the comparative advantage part, what about the other skills and Attributes (with reference to your example)?

I think, and Konsaki mentioned, that this really just flat out depends on your own opinions of what makes a game "bad".

Anyone outside of people that get a kick out of crunching the numbers to that degree probably won't ever notice. I know that even after years of playing SR3, and with math junkies and power munchers even, that until I started frequenting DSF that I never even gave a second thought to the "problem" of a 7 being the same as a 6. If I wanted a test to be more difficult that 6, I made it an 8, and explained that it was due to 1 being a failure (oh noes...possibly a house rule?).

It certainly never hampered my enjoyment of the game, or that of anyone I ever played with. And I fully expect that the "problems" of SR4 would be the same to me. Minor tiny issues that we even noticed would get a cover-rule, and we'd move on with playing the game.

I think the sheer amount of vitriol and anger and frustration is ridiculous, personally. Why on Earth would anyone ever nitpick something like that to the point that it makes the system "bad" or "unplayable" to themselves? (And before you get your hackles up too far, yes, I'm aware that people have different opinions, yes, I'm aware that "fun" is different to different people. No, that doesn't make my take on it any more or less valid. /disclaimer)

I'd be willing to bet that no game in the history of role playing has ever been designed without quirks, faults in the numbers, small flaws. But I'm equally willing to bet that thousands of people have played them and had fun regardless.

More power to people that think they've created a perfect numbers system. I hope your system(s) do make it into print. It gives people options. I'm just giving the take of someone that Doesn't Care™ enough for it to ruin a game for them.

This is a fundamental truth that is true for everything I say, and everything you say, too.
Welcome to the real world.

Because it could have been done better. With zero effort. I personally have absolutely no understanding for a bad rule, that could have been made much better if somebody had just thought about it for one second.

Example: Ammo rules, encryption rules, TM balancing, sensor unification (or the lack of), capacity unification (or the lack of), matrix rules, unified agents - drone transition (or the lack of), unified cyberware - full borg - drones - vehicles transition (or the lack of) . . .

Make no mistake: SR4 rules are good. Far superior to SR3 rules, but with a little more consistency, math and unification they could have been damn nearly perfect.

If I thought the SR4 system was crap I would not post here.

Funny thing. It was playtested with higher cost Attributes along with them at the final cost. The final setting of the Attribute cost are based on the results of actual play, as opposed to your blinders-on "math" conclusions that don't take into account the effects from the rest of the game.

Little wonder that it actually plays pretty damn well as is, with a mix of different Attributes and Skills at different levels and a mix of karma spending on Attributes and Skills during play.

And what do you think I am? Thing is I've gone up and down this, and played/DMed for over a year and I'll say "the checks and balanaces in a system are no less there just because people don't notice them". Because they are there, and they work, and yes they can be ignored but the effects come out anyway.

really necessary? I don't remember insulting you personally, or in fact anyone else. Neither do I remember being some kind of naive child that needed your wisdom in this regard.

See, here's where I think you veer a bit. I don't know you, so I don't know whether this is just how you express yourself, or if you truly mean "the people that wrote the rules system put no effort into it, and didn't care about their product". I would think that what you're really doing is expressing frustration, and that this fact tints the way you're phrasing your criticism. (I do it myself. Look at my posts any time I talk about certain story elements that I disagree with.)

But you also seem like a literal person. In this sense, then your post very well means that you feel that the writers and designers just hacked together a bunch of off-the-cuff ideas, threw them in a text document, and sent the whole mess to the printers and said "you know what, screw the customer/player/fan/GM/junkies". And I don't think that that's a very fair assessment.

The fact is, the designers and writers do the best they can. That might not end up producing a product that you consider to be perfect, and they might not all be mathematicians, but that's no reason to mischaracterize them as louts.

I also don't know your affiliation with Fanpro/WK/"official SR", so I don't know whether to take your assumptions that yours and Frank's rules changes make it into a future release as wishful/hopeful thinking (not being negative, just a way to describe it), or if you have some kind of official indication that this is the case. If it does, I congratulate you on producing stuff that is sound and that contributes enough to be made "canon". But I personally don't think it's right of you to continually (backhandedly) slander the original designers and writers if you weren't involved in the process.

And please don't take any of this too personally. It's the internet. We don't know one another beyond our abilities to express ourselves in type, and I'm not trying to paint you with a hateful brush.

edits:

Woops. Took me a while to get back to my post.

I understand a desire to see the system reach nirvana. I also know that there are people out there that do get enjoyment out of, or can't help but notice and point out, flaws in a system. (I thought I said that earlier, but I probably wasn't as clear as I could have been.)

If you'll look, I'm saying "flaws don't matter if you don't make them", and you're saying "flaws matter because we make them". Different takes, is all.

Comparative Advantage is a term from economics. It's the idea that a positive balance of trade can be generated between two groups so long as the ratios of production aren't the same - even if one product or group is vastly more efficient overall. The classic example is when a rich imperialist economy is all industrialized and better at producing everything than a poor backwater is, but is more better at producing technological goods and less superior when making simple food stuffs. If the rich economy makes only technological goods and trades a small amount of them to the poor economy for foodstuffs (which the poor economy exclusively makes), then both economies will have more technological goods and more foodstuffs than if they both tried to make both (although the rich economy will still have the vast majority of everything).

This applies to Shadowrun, because while Attributes are an incredibly better deal with both Karma and Build Points, the difference is starker when you're paying with Karma. So if you have a sufficiently large amount of Karma, purchasing all of your attributes with those points is a better way to go. Not because buying skills at chargen doesn't leave you totally boned - but because buying skills with Karma makes you even more totally boned.

The thing is though, that the amount of Karma you ever get is extremely finite, and doled out to you in small amounts.

So long as you still have a pile of Karma small enough that you can invest it all into efficient things (Attributes, Skill Specializations, Spells), you won't regret any BP you spent on Attributes. This means of course, that a Magician will never regret any points of character builtding spent on attributes, because there is a literally bottomless resevoire of things to spend points on efficiently if you are a spell slinger.. And even a Mundane has 8 attributes to contemplate and a starting cap averaging just 3.5 among them. He's got 20 ppoints of attributes to purchase, and even for the 5,5,5,5,5,1,1,1 min/maxer that still leaves 270 Karma to spend on that (and another crap tonne to be spent on Specializations).

A low initial investment in attributes will start to pay off after the player who maxxed out their initial investment in attributes has run out of efficient things t o spend Karma on. That is, it will start to pay off when a character who maximized initial attributes has accumulated approximately 350 Karma. And then what? You've still been coming up second for 350 Karma worth of adventures. Now, finally, you're about to catch up. In a few more dozen Karma you'll even be ahead of the game.

But so what? You have 400 Karma under your belt. Are you really going to keep the game going with the same characters long enough to make your superiority balance out all the time you spent sucking up the place? Even at 6 Karma a night and one game a week, you're looking at over a year to break even, and over two years to have your character be anything close to balanced overall. Campaigns have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

---

And no, this isn't part of a secret genius master plan of game balance. True story: when the Ally spirit section was made linear over my objections, the first set of rules that got handed down from on high looked like this:

• Force costs 5 Karma/point
• Skills cost 2 Karma/point
• Skill Groups cost 5 Karma/point

I took one look at that and did a spit take of my Cheerios all over my monitor. But you know what? A lot of other people didn't. If people like Serbitar or myself don't make a stink about things like this they will just roll on through.

-Frank

This was not meant as an insult. It is just plain obvious, that everything somebody is posting is based on the posters prejudiced views and opinions. That is intrinsically true and needs no pointing out.

Far from that. I think they put a lot of effort into their product (though, sometimes I am wandering what is taking so long . . .). My point is that "they" waste time and effort by doing things uneffectively and taking on things from the wrong side.
I doubt that any SR developer ever calculated the odds of some rule, or even wrote a small programm to check the rule mathematically. Rulesets are math. They should be treated as such.
Good examples for this are the ammo rules. If somebody had done a very very simple calculation, he would have found that there is something wrong. Same goes for encryption.
We are talking very basic math stuff here.

Furthermore: One could have created unificationf rom start:
Example: Conceptually, there is no difference from a drone and a full borg. Make the rules such, that drone rules and cyberware rules "meet" at the full borg. Just like drones and vehicles are conceptually the same. Same goes for sensors. Make cyberware sensors, non-cyber sensors and drone/vehicle sensors the same. Just vary sensor reach, price and capacity. This is very simple. Yes it was not done. Same goes for capacity. Why is drone sensor capacity different from cyberware capacity?

My point is: Think, before throwing rules together. First make the concept, then fill it with rules and stuff. Not the other way round.

Of course, this was done, to a degree, at least in contrast to SR3 wich was a magnitudes worse and a real patchwork of rules that were simply thrown in without unification.

I think that a lot of people worked together, threw ideas into the pot without one person having a real concept to fill in the conecting points.
The sensor rules for normal gear are fine for themeselves. The cyberware sensor rules are fine. But they are not connected. Even agents and drone pilots are disconnected at the moment.
I am a theoretical physicist. I see possible unifications everywhere ...

Of course they do the best they can. I do not doubt that. But I think they need much more of a programmers or mathematicians approach, at least for the rules ascpect of SR4.
And do not mistake that something mathematically sound, unified and consistent has to be overly complex. That is not the idea.

My affilation with FanPro is not that deep ( in no way comparable to, for example, Franks). I do not know enough of their production procedures to allow for any objective judgement. I just know what I can do in what time (for example the stuff in my sig) and where my personal focus is when looking at rules. Judgement of my criticism should take that into account.

And I am really not posting here to get anything of my "work" into an offical product. I am posting because I think, things can be done better. I want to discuss these ideas with others, and provide others with the solutions. I think SR4 is a good product and I think it is worth to try an make it a little better. And of course I like being cited in posts. Chicks 'n' Fame and such.
If some of my ideas make it into offical products, well, I would feel honoured.
And last, but not least, I like forum discussions.

I do not have the "right" to do anything. I point out what I think can be done better, how it can be done better and why it can be done better. I can foce nobody to change anything. Its of course up to the developers to listen, or not. To change, or not. But my opinion is my opinion and I will voice my opinion as long as I think it is relevant.

Hehe, I now that. Been there, done that. No offense taken.

I say: Flaws that can be corrected with minimal effort should be corrected.
By the way: The character creation thing is something which can not be "easily" corrected. But still I wonder why they introduced BP in the first place . . . (OK, I see the reason, to make creation simple, but that reason is not very compelling, as karma creation is almost as simple, and you do not need an additional mechanism, which make the whole rulset simpler and more streamlined).

I don't think so. Neither Serbitar nor myself ere part ofthe design process when those initial costs were codified. We came in later.

-Frank

No idea. I was not involved in the original design process and I think Frank wasnt either. (We wouldnt have those ammo rules if he was . . .)

Edit: damn, too late.

Hey I'm with you on where you're coming from. I mean I don't obsess over the crunchy bits of a game. SR4 is not broken as to be unplayable, that's Cadwallon *cough cough* , but it does need some reworking.

Almost no product is perfect off the line. Still I don't know why you think only MMORPGs and D20 have instilled some kind of need for perfection. I loathe MMORPGs and D20 is lame, the goal of perfection in an RPG system or in anything should always be kept in mind. I mean when I write something for public consumption I want 100% of my audience to like it or at least appreciate it's construction if not content. If I didn't give a shit I wouldn't fact check, edit, spell check, etc. Let's take a relatively recent example, I love William Gibson's work. The guy is brilliant at word craft. Did I like Pattern Recognition's content? Not especially. Did I drool over his writing style? Hell yes.

I mean there's a disturbing trend in today's society to just generate and accept crap. This is especially prevalent in the software/video gaming industry. The idea that you can shovel some garbage out the door just to get it to market and you'll patch the glaring problems sooner or later if ever. I'm not saying FanPro does this but it certainly isn't something you want to emulate like a certain sword and sorcery game even if it does have greater market share.

Debating the rules is a good thing. I mean we shake the system down and work the bugs out for free (most of us) just for a love of the game. And yes you can even use every rule as written and pretend nothing needs reworking if you really want to. Just don't be surprised when errata or changes appear.

End of rant, I seem to go nutty around this time. Now I've got some drones to paint.

You left out ...every other aspect of life. Actually, I had a conversation with my mother a few months ago about this very thing. How the customer/consumer/audience is expected to just accept garbage and bad attitudes and bad service and just go on, and how we're both really bad at it. The problem, or at least the reason the problem continues, is that people do just take it and go on.

But we digress.

Like Frank was saying, I doubt that anyone actually does this. But so many people house rule, interpret, and run their games without ever thinking about it that it's not what they think of when someone asks "do you play by the rules". It's so intrinsic to gaming that they just say "yeah".

On another note:

I now hate you. My painting table isn't set up yet since the move, and my entire gaming/hobby room is a mess. But new bookshelves are in the process of being built, and then maybe some storage cabinets, and then I'll have workspace again! Muhahahahaha.

I like SR3 as well. I'm still baffled by the edition change. But I suppose it was just "time" or perhaps economics had something to do with it. I could search for the early edition change posts but i'm not incredibly interested. I just kind of go with the flow. In the past I used to just accept that edition changes where indeed beneficial, but since the entire 3.0 to 3.5 D&D fiasco I do take a hard look at new rules. I try and stay optimistic that SR4 will turn out better than earlier editions. With Frank on board and with his oversight it's very likely to. Maybe I'll get lucky some day and make a mark as well.

We do indeed digress.

Good luck with the workspace. You can have room at my place . I'll be posting a miniatures thread soon but I want to finish a little more stuff before I do. I'm a miniature junkie.