1 - Agreed, but luck happens
2 - Also true
3 - That's a matter of opinion. 1 in a million shots happen, just not often. Mr. Lucky can do it more frequently, *in theory.* I've rolled 10 dice before and critically glitched, so just because he rolls edge doesn't mean he's going to succeed. Just means he's likely to.
4 - Luck *never* trumps skill. Anything Mr. Lucky can do, someone else can do better, much better.
5 - Again disagree here. Mr. Lucky can only do things to a minor degree, and he will run out of chances. You can't use him as the team hacker, the team gunbunny or anything else, because eventually he runs out of luck. You never run out of skill.
6 - Generalists still survive, because like in point 5, Mr. Lucky only has X tries before he's screwed, and the generalist will still have infinite tries at whatever he can attempt (which is a lot, if it's a generalist)
7 - A disconnect, maybe, but that boils down to perception and how the game is run in a lot of ways. Even "gritty, street" games can have a cinematic effect or two in them. Mr. Lucky, the super optimized luck star, is just the most extreme way of getting this.

In the end, here's the biggest issue I think, and all your arguments so far support this conclusion:

When using a high-edge character in extreme situations, the character does better than he probably should.

This statement, even I agree with. But at average levels of edge and typical situations (even non-typical), the rules hold up fairly well. Take anything, rules or materials or whatever, to the extremes and eventually break. Nothing is foolproof in that regard.

The question becomes this: Do these highly unlikely combination of factors happen often in your game? If so, then maybe your GM is doing it intentionally to let your character shine a bit. That or perhaps they're not adequately leaving holes for the characters to accomplish their goals, thus requiring only Mr. Lucky to get involved and save the day. Either way, that's a GM issue, not a rules issue.

Yup. Because he was a normal guy going up against the Luckiest Man Alive. As I said the gamemaster who approved this character in his game must expect this. In fact he specifically allowed it. If he doesn't want something like this to be possible because it spoils suspension of disbelief, breaks continuity or disrupts the atmosphere, the character can and should be vetted (much like he could vet a group of magic heavies in what was intended to be a ganger campaign, or a Body 30 troll with no stealth and a HMG fetish in an infiltrator campaign).

Now factor in normal circumstances.

You haven't answered my second question. I asked whether this situation had come up, your answer suggests it hasn't.

I'd also ask whether your SR4 gamemaster makes full use of Edge for NPCs, since the previous time we did this dance you indicated it wasn't common practice at your table - and this directly affects Edge depletion on the character's part during the course of adventures.

The system allows for the near impossible to happen, not for the impossible. If you shoot in the opposite direction you are never going to hit. So if the gamemaster allowed the shot in those extreme circumstances to take place then the onus is on him to live with the consequences.

You're disassociating what Atttribute Ratings mean from what's happening. Really high Edge does indeed allow for some incredible stuff, but that's what really high Edge is intended to do. Having Edge 6+ places you among a handful of the most consistenly lucky individuals in the world. Edge 7 puts you beyond that in the realm of amazingly lucky. Edge 8 means you're in a class all your own, where destiny smiles on you consistently and allows you to do those things.

Let's try that then. Let's make this into a regular example rather than an exceptional one. Let's use Joe Wageslave with Edge 2 and Boris the Street Sam with Edge 5.

I'll concede that it can shatter suspension of disbelief (if it ever comes up) - but then again that's why the guy is Mr Lucky.

We've all seen that the Citymaster example is contingent on gamemaster agreement that the shot is possible. If the gamemaster decides that the Called Shot isn't possible (because for some reason he thinks citymasters were specifically built to avoid a vulnerable spot), he rules it isn't during the targeting phase of the attack and the example falls apart. If he, the gamemaster, specifically allows the shot in his game he should be ready for the possibility that it succeeds. The system has a built in check, the gamemaster is responsible for deciding whether or not to use it in his game.

As several of the preceding posts have indicated (in response to your FastJack example) this is incorrect. Would you like to try that example with programming a Rating 5 program?

You've yet to prove that - plus it's only eight times "a game" if the gamemaster wishes. The rules allow you to tailor the importance and reliability of Edge by adjusting the refresh rate. If the gamemaster/group thinks Edge is unbalanced they can restrict the refresh rate to a trickle making it much less of a factor in play and hence making near impossible successes less common in the long run.

More importantly though, if the gamemaster is posing appropriate challenges to Mr Lucky he'll also be reducing his current Edge and thereby reducing the number of times Mr Lucky can try to outshine a specialist.

I can say "try" because by your own admittance your version of Mr Lucky ("who (after some Karma) has 20 dice in Pistols, and averages 6-8 dice in most other categories. He lacks technical skills, but for that he's got skillwires with a Skillwire Expert System") is going to be able to occassionally bolster his Pistols dice pool to 28 when using Edge. He can bolster certain pools to the 14-16 range when using Edge. And technicals skills, even with the Expert System, are going to be maxed out at 4 (same as everyone else with Skillwires) since you get rerolls.

What you seem to be forgetting is that every time Mr Lucky might use Edge, so can everyone else and specialists have the option of bolstering their naturally higher pools too.

What Mr Lucky is good at is pulling a lucky save out of the hat when a specialist is unavailable or otherwise engaged but that's why he picked up those two extra points of Edge and why the gamemaster allowed him into play.

You don't need a variety of obscure skills more than eight times a game, you just need the same obscure skill multiple times or to present Mr Lucky with actual challenges that deplete his Edge (such as boosting pretty much any pool, including defensive ones). Depending on his rolls he might even deplete faster. I've seen someone burn through 5 Edge twenty minutes into a three 5 hour session adventure.

I suggest you take a look at the How Is Your Game? thread it's pretty clear that a whole lot of people are enjoying gritty street level games, that Mr Lucky isn't common at anyone's table despite your issues this system breaking "problem". As you've seen yourself on this thread most people are doing fine with the occassional "wildly cinematic effect" too - it's so rare and exceptional that it doesn't really come into play enough to interfere with suspension-of-disbelief.

So maybe the disconnect here is between how you view and use the rule set and how most other people play and enjoy the rule set.

While I won't say that this thread doens't have interesting content, along with waaaay more dissection of a "proper" argement than is really need, this really is horribly off topic. So much in fact that I had to go back to the first page and look up what the hell we were talking about again.

Please, if you'd like to continue the debate on Edge use, Mr. Lucky, and so on, create the proper thread for it. Something like : Mr. Lucky - redux - again. Whatever. This is the innapropriate place for the discussion, as this poster's thread has already horribly mutated into something not of it's nature.

Slacker!

1: Lone Star is not an Ares Subsidiary.
2: Knight Errant IS and Ares Subbsidiary, and the personal 'golden child' of Ares CEO Damien Knight.
3: Lone Star is the chief competitor of Knight Errant.
4: By your logic above those design flaws MUST be in Lone Star equipment sold to them by Ares.

Except those aren't Ultimatum scenarios. Instead, those sound like standard new player scenarios. A bit of education, from either you or one of the players, will likely fix that. Throwing down the gauntlet and shouting: "Not in my game!" isn't nearly as likely.

That was one of the points of the waterfront example. The troll heavy weapons specialist couldn't get a bead, but Mr. Lucky could default and still make the shot. After a certain point, your skill ceases to matter, and only your luck makes a difference. There are many other systems with a luck factor where this is not the case.

Oddly enough, in the last SRM game I played ("Wetwork, Pure and Simple"), Mr Lucky doubled as the team face. And his charisma plus social skill isn't that impressive, 7 dice. He did better at it than the generalist built to backup the face, mostly without invoking Edge. The trick is resource management. Save your Edge for the really big moments, which unfortunately tend to be spotlight moments for other players.

Generalists may survive, but they're decidedly obsolete in SR4. Shadowrun has always been a game about specialists. But that disconnect is worthy of a thread all its own.

Let's try a more typical example, then. Mfb originally posted the one-klick-out-to-sea example, where the sam in question had a -15 to his Longarms skill. Taking a look at Mr. Lucky and other Dumpshock standard characters, it's not uncommon for one to have 15-20 in his primary dicepools. Heck, the badly-done street sam in the BBB has, IIRC, 16 in automatics. So, he still stands a good chance of making the shot, especially if he gets surprise (and a one kilometer shot is pretty surprising). That's without Edge, either; with even a Edge of 3, those odds go up noticeably.

Both those were Called-shots-to-bypass-armor. Which enabled me to one shot a troll tank and a PT boat. Should things have been just a tad more extreme, they would have also gone into longshot territory. Remember, one of my points is that Called Shots are also broken.

What happens if we have a much closer shot, but the only way to hit the target is with a ricochet? We've all heard of the Magic Bullet Theory, so truly wacky ricochets are within the realm of possibility, if not probability. This could be how Mr. Lucky takes out the Citymaster, by a Magic Bullet down the exhaust pipe. So, yes, you could in theory fire in the opposite direction and hit, provided you had your Magic Bullets loaded.

(And please, let's not derail this thread further by arguing the merits of the Magic Bullet theory. Let's just acknowledge that not everything that is really improbable is impossible.)

And as I said before, it is very clear that past a certain point, skill ceases to matter in favor of luck. The troll in the example, being a specialist, should have 7-9 dice in his Heavy Weapons skill alone; Mr. Lucky has 0. Yet despite this huge disparity, in the example, Mr. Lucky has a much better chance of making the shot. Our hypothetical troll might have an Edge of 1 (which may or may not be used by now) and the Bad Luck hindrance, all in an attempt to save points for heavy weapons. We don't know.

First, you start game with a full Edge pool, so it is "a game", at least once. Although afterwards, I'll concede it becomes "Up to eight times a game". However, Edge is integral to the system. By slowing down the refresh rate, you hurt the low-edge characters more than the high-edge ones. I've seen this in practice: in SRM, I've yet to see a single point of Edge be refreshed in game. Mr, Lucky and high-edge characters aren't bothered by this, but the low-edge characters run out very quickly.

Just taking a look around Dumpshock, I see tons of threads on house rules, rule compaints, rule fixes, interpretation arguments, and so on and so forth. I don't see anything like this on the Savage Worlds, Wushu, or Capes forums just to name a few. Heck, I don't see this many on the Wizards forums! Even in this thread, I see very few "overjoyed" comments as opposed to: "it's not that bad" comments. Which leads me to wonder how many people enjoy Shadowrun, but merely tolerate the ruleset.

First point, I was born in '79 and I am still kinda stuck in the 80s on may things. so it is very easy.

So old WOD is your preferred style, a system based on player and PC disempowerment.... explains a lot.

I think Cain was referring to somethiong more like Dogs in the Vineyard. That game has a GM but the GM is constrained by a single rule "say yes, or roll the dice"

And this means... what? How is it relevant to the current direction of the discussion? Moreover, why did it take you several pages to respond to that one post of mine, and why have you chosen not to comment on anything else?

I'd post a better response to you, but your snide Well-that-explains-everything kind of post leaves little for discussion and plenty for insults. Feel free to elaborate or else contribute to the discussion at hand, okay?

That question is easy, I only got back to dumpshock yesterday and read the thread all the way through, replying to posts as i found them.

As for the main point. You prefer the playstyle of oWoD.
oWoD is very into disempowering PCs and, to a slightly lesser extent, players.
You prefer a GM to have significant authority over your games.

All this fits a pattern where you prefer a hierarchical, structured environment.

Long story, short version, you prefer a game style which that 'other game' would call lawful.
Others prefer a style that game would chaotic.

no insult intended, just a case of the lightbulb going off in my noggin

I really like the ruleset. A lot. Most of my complaints have to do with what is clearly poor editing like discrepancies between price tables. Bloodzillas are definitely a weird blip on the radar but are easily fixed. I find the matrix rules irritatingly incomplete, but they're easy to play fast and loose with, so I don't particularly care; the worst criticisms against it can be mitigated by firmly ruling on what agents can and cannot do and the script kiddy thing is largely a thematic criticism, although I can certainly understand why some react vehemently against it. Likewise whether or not skills are too expensive depends largely on whether you feel skill redundancy or systemic encouragement of metagaming is the bigger problem. I think part of the problem with finding people who like the rules Cain is that people like me who really don't see any truly massive problems to fix are unlikely to run into a Chicken Little thread which is where most of these discussions end up taking place.

Glad to hear it, and sorry if I sounded snappy. My initial interpretation of your comments came off as being something snooty and directed at me personally. I'm glad to see that isn't the case, and my apologies for jumping to that conclusion.

That said, yes, I suppose we do enjoy having a bit of authority exercised by the GM. The mentality we tend to take is that the GM is the merciless god of our universe(s), and we respect the GM as such. We grant him/her the power to rule over the group, make decisions, and keep things on track. We have a fairly mature bunch of players, but we're horribly prone to tangents, and a random Panther Cannon shooting you in the leg because you're not paying attention works wonders. (I'm only partly joking with that last bit... hehe)

I'm still not getting what you mean by disempowerment though. In the games I've been party to, the players are easily empowered to do whatever they need to, and take the story where they will. Hell, the GM helps provide fluff half the time while the players help decide the plot direction through their roleplaying. Sometimes a simple die roll can alter the course of the game entirely (I can't tell you how often a botch/critical glitch has completely changed the plans for the night, let alone a few nights to follow... all sorts of interesting things happen when you completely blow that willpower roll)

As both a player and as the characters I have the opportunity to play, I never feel at a loss of power. I might run into situations beyond my ken or skill, but that happens in any game system. So yeah, enough of my rambling. What do you mean by disempowerment exactly?

That interpretation is very much still up for debate. What's turning against the example is the fact that all called shots require GM fiat, which is another point I've raised that hasn't been discussed as heavily. Fixing one mistake with another is not usually a good thing.

People asked for a non-extreme example, I provided one. I might add that I calculated Fastjack's use of Edge into the example; it's simply irrelevant. And Mr. Lucky could rush the job as well; the odds against him botching or critically botching are still pretty high.

I don't get what you're trying to say. You're arguing that mfb's original example is invalid? Or my exaggerated one is? When no one, including you, has been able to invalidate it?

You seem to be saying the example is too extreme, but at the same time, it's not problematic because it's not extreme enough. That Non Sequitur is really puzzling me.

Oh, and for the record: The "highest penalty only" rule is listed as an optional rule. Once we start allowing in optional and house rules, we open the gates to all kinds of problems. We're having enough trouble with canon rules, we don't need to add soft rules into this mess.

Never said there was. Another Straw Man.

You wanted a less extreme example, we can go back to the pornomancer pissing on the Don's mother. Even at a whopping -20 penalty (and the only way you can get there is by stacking smaller ones, otherwise this example gets even worse) the pornomancer's dice pool of 32 is going to sail through it, with or without edge. He's going to convince the Don that pissing on his mother is kinky. High dicepools break the game, and the counter for that-- high dicepool penalties-- also break the game.

The discussion has moved on somewhat past the extreme examples, which I pulled up to demonstrate the principle. Now that they've been accepted as problems, I intend to show how smaller cases are still a problem. Why are you stuck on them?

What he's saying, I think, is that oWoD and other games are based on the principle that the GM's story is paramount. It's the GM's sandbox, he just tolerates the presence of players as someone to play with. Compare this to Adventure!, another White Wolf game that has a Dramatic Editing mechanic. Players have the ability to add elements to the scene, as either bonuses or complications. Instead of saying: "Please, Mr. GM, is there a chandelier I can swing from?" you can simply say: "Here's an Inspiration point, I swing from the chandeliers, do a backflip, and grab the girl." Or Exalted, where the better you describe your actions, the more of a mechanical benefit you receive. Basically, you get the same flourishes that add so much fun to a game, that you can only get in SR4 with a critical success. Serenity and Battlestar Galatica also have Plot Points, which act in a similar manner to Dramatic Editing, plus have more tangible mechanical benefits.

Going onto less traditional games, Faery's Tale also has a Dramatic Editing mechanic, where players are rewarded for increasing the challenges they face, and and are encouraged to help tailor the story. Dogs in the Vineyard, which I've never played, apparently has something very similar, plus has many other Forgite touches. The much-mentioned Wushu is based almost entirely on an Exalted-like stunting system, where the better you describe your actions, the better off you are mechanically. Additionally, in Wushu, you never say "I try to hit him" and roll to see if you succeed; instead, you say: "I shoot him in the shoulder, watching him rock back on his feet, almost falling to his knees, as blood comes spraying from his shoulder" and roll to see how effective it was.

So, oWoD was heavily GM-biased, even for its time. Nowadays, the trend is towards games the reward and encourage player input on a story level. Not on a plot level, which is what you're describing-- on the level of story and world.

...except this has also come into play with experienced players who I had gamed with before, either when I was starting a new campaign or they were bringing in a new character into an existing campiagn (for whatever reason - PC death, PC undergoing surgery/recovery, player bored with previous character etc.). In fact the one troublesome player I had used to test my limits a lot by trying some of the things I mentioned. Some people just do not get it sometimes.

True, it doesn't have to be an ultimatum, but to some people that is the way it still sounds.

No. What's turning against the example is that there is not the slightest shred of evidence that the Citymaster works the way you are suggesting it works. Shooting through barriers does not allow called shots. At all. Those two rules do not interact in any way.

You are completely wrong and totally making stuff up. It's a busted example, and I have no idea why you are clinging to it. We can move on to the other ones once you accept that this one is not "technically legal" or "in dispute" - it's just wrong. It's is based on using the Called Shot rules to negate armor on a completely different subsystem which uses similar mechanics.

This is like wanting to add Will to Live dice in against Mana Bolts. No better and no worse. Drop it from your argument or continue to be made fun of.

-Frank

I really think the Citymaster example is dead. Let's look at the following:

There you have it in your own words. There isn't a problem if the rules say "if a vulnerable point exists."

Now consider this excerpt from the rules:

Now that should have been the end of it, though we then had to endure a long twisting argument that this was bad because it required "GM Fiat" to decide. Short of detailed schematics of the fictional vehicles of 2070 and three nights of studying them, it's hard to see what else we can possibly ask of the rules. I've normally only heard the term "GM Fiat" to refer to more heavy-handed GM abuses of power along the lines of "Well he was wearing armour underneath his clothes that you didn't check for so the villain's still alive so there!" I really, really don't agree the citymaster example qualifies and I don't think anyone else does, either.

As you say, the chances of Mr. Lucky botching are not pretty high - they're actually 50/50. We have to ask what your point actually is? That both a very skilled person and a less skilled person can both accomplish a trivial task? Of course they can. That they both take the same time? Not really - if Fastjack wants, he can reliably accomplish the task in half the time, whilst half the time Mr. Lucky will cock it up. The example also breaks down when attempting less trivial tasks. Your example just isn't seen as anything that breaks the rules by most of us.

Well there are a number of things to say about the Rainy Day Shot. The first of which is that whether or not it is a problem is very subjective. After all, the example relies on the luckiest man alive hunting down a wage slave so nondescript that he has to be the survivor of a group of zero-rating grunts. If you don't like luck being an actual attribute of a character in a game because you feel it stretches belief, then house rule it as I have done with my fixed Edge progression rule... but recognise that the house rule is based on your own flavour preferences, you're not required to make the house rule because it's unbalanced. A combat specialist will be consistently outperforming Mr. Lucky and HIS skill doesn't run out if he uses it too much. Mr Lucky's edge (pun sadly not avoided) over the combat-based character only shows up if the GM piles on very large negative modifiers, too. -5 is normally more than enough. -15 being a little unusual. Mr. Lucky simply isn't a problem from a rules point of view.

Well these so called "soft rules" would resolve your entire problem, so the only way it would complicate things would be to make it even harder for you to argue your example. And it never actually says "optional rule" just for reference. It's listed as a suggestion to GMs. Really, your arguing that the rules are broken on the basis that you deliberately refuse to use the suggestions given on the very same page of the core rules, well, it's not really fair, is it?

Woah - thread breach! When did the Pissing Pornomancer suddenly appear in the list of examples? We had a good old debate on this in another thread and the general consensus was that if a player says he's doing something that is obviously not using their skills, then there's no reason to roll those skills. Just like the ninja in the same thread that said "I'm going to sneak past the guard by painting myself orange and screaming in his face." The player is deliberately creating a contradiction between stated action and stated intention. You don't say "-10 dice for that" you say "you're not actually trying to use your skill so you don't get to roll it." And wasn't that pornomancer build an adept that used magic anyway? Isn't magic supposed cloud the mind and mesmerise?

Woah! They've been accepted as problems? By you perhaps. But not even Mr. Lucky using the Longshot rules could convince me that they'd been accepted as rules issues by many (any?) other people here.

-K.

Okay, excuse my indignation, but what the crap hell kind of GMs have you been playing with? A GM "just tolerates" the players? That's so far beyond idiotic it's insane. Without the players, the GM doesn't have a game, he has a piece of fiction he can write down on a piece of paper. I think you're assuming again. Our GM's (myself included here) don't hand the players some sort of script and then veto any changes that are suggested. They do the SAME THING any GM in ANY game does. They come up with a storyline, present plot points and adapt based on player/character choices/actions. The players can choose to pursue all, some, one or none of the plot points. I've had GM's completely have to rethink their plans because the players went down when the GM only thought of left and right.

oWoD also specifically states (multiple times I might add) that every single thing in the books is considered optional, and that if the GM needs to alter things to make an interesting story that the players can ENJOY, then so be it. Not once does it state "Railroad your players and take away their free will!" You obviously have a downtrodden opinion of the Storyteller system, and my guess is that it's due to horrible GM's not a failure in the system. One of our players had a similar opinion until he played with us. He still prefers other systems such as Rifts [he's a powergamer extraordinaire], but he even offers to GM storyteller based systems on occasion. That should say something.


EDIT:

How the hell is that a "less extreme example"? You've used the rules to make the highest statted face character you can possibly come up with. 32 dice is *not* a typical dice pool. This example is nothing BUT extreme.

"Less extreme." I don't think this phrase means what you think it means.

EDIT 2.0:
Frankly, if a face character pissed on the Don's mother in my game, the Don would shoot him in the face before he had a chance to so much as say "I'm sorry." I'm sorry, talking is irrelevant at that point. Bang, you're dead. Stupidity is fatal in our world.

Actually, one of the main features and selling points of the Storyteller system is that it is different from other RPGs (at the time) if played the way it is presented in the books. Even the name says something about the game system ... Storyteller System ... where the story is the most important thing.

Admittedly there are myriad ways of playing, but Cain's comment was quite valid, in that White Wolf set about creating a system that puts the emphasis more on telling stories than other games.

My bad. I was not very clear. I meant the emphasis in Storyteller games is on the GM's overall story more than those of the individual Players. I'm not saying that this is inherently wrong. Just that the core concepts of the game are different.

Fair enough. I can agree with that to a degree. I guess both myself and our other GM's have always viewed it in such a way that the story cannot exist without the players, so the focus must be on them so that things can still move on. Hell, we've had entire epic story lines that revolved entirely around the players and their development.

I guess it boils down to how a GM runs things in the end. A mediocre GM can take a story, and give the players parts. A good/great GM can come up with an idea, let the players make up their own parts, and make it all work together to make the best story possible. My experience tends towards the latter.

"Not in my game" aka: "My way or the high way!" is what I call the nuclear option. Generally speaking, gentle suggestions and negotiations work better than throwing down the gauntlet. I think you'll agree, based on your experiences, that this tactic works better than the heavy-handed approach.

Ooh, a threat *and* an ultimatum. You're really not proving your case. Each and every logical fallacy you provide, only strengthens the Citymaster example's validity.

It's all a matter of degree, and gets into a slippery slope question. We know that extreme isn't okay; but what degree of it is?

The issue here is that Fastjack should have produced a mechanically superior product. He can't. He can add non-mechanical flourishes and arpeggios, by scoring a critical success. Even at a trivial encounter, there should be some benefit.

As for the rush job bit goes, Mr. Lucky stands a higher chance of botching; but unless he gets a critical botch (not likely with 8 dice), his program is only going to be quirky, not inoperational. Which also has been factored into the example.

The original example, as posted by mfb and cited by me in the last post, was merely a -15 shot out to sea against a normal target. With or without Edge, the sam in question is better off not aiming, and still stands an unholy chance of success. If we factor in even a small Edge of 3 for the sam, things get disgusting very quickly.

To quickly go over the small example: The various modifiers on the sam total to -15. He has 20 in his applicable dicepool. Without factoring in Edge, he's going to score 1.66 successes, rounded up to 2. Joe Normal, presuming he isn't caught by Surprise by a one-kilometer shot, gets his Reaction of 3 to defend with, which equals 1 success: not enough.

If we factor in Edge on both sides (which is only fair), Sam the sam's now has an exploding dicepool of 8, which equals approximately 4 successes. Joe has 5 exploding dice, which equal to 2 or 3 successes. Still not enough.

Here's another problem. Mr. Lucky, as written and posted multiple times on Dumpshock, *is* a combat specialist. He's throwing 20 dice for pistols, 6-8 dice for most other categories, and has that insane edge to fall back on. Mr. Lucky is more than a match for any combat character. He breaks the game in two ways: by having a huge dicepool, and by having a huge Edge. In addition to dominating combat, he can temporarily dominate (or at least match) the other specialists.

Let's compare Mr. Lucky to a more balanced character. Gary Generalist has an Edge of 3, throws 15 dice for pistols, and 8-10 in most other categories. A nice, well rounded character, yes? Mr. Lucky completely dominates him in pistols, is only slightly behind him in most other skill categories, and can completely trump him if both invoke Edge. By hyperspecializing and buying up Edge, we have a fixed formula for dominant characters. And carbon-copy characters, due to rule superiority, is a major balance issue for any game. Even D&D avoids this problem neatly, due to their feat system.

Not really, since we'd have to invoke optional rules that do opposite things to counter my points. Heck, one optional rule is to chuck everything and start from scratch, but the resulting bundle of house rules wouldn't help our discussion, which is of the canon ruleset.

It wasn't one of mine, but it has been brought up earlier in this thread. I forgot about it too, until I reread everything from the beginning. At any event: "I piss on the Don's mother and try to convince him it's kinky" is a valid use of the Seduction specialization, even if it's extreme. And the point stands: the pornomancer stands a decent chance of pulling it off, despite some hefty penalties. And without invoking Edge.

Really? I come to game with a loose framework. Based on the players choices, I don't adapt my story to fit them in-- I rewrite the whole story based on what they;re doing. The players choose which elements of the story-- developed by myself or otherwise-- to turn into plot hooks.

You're used to thinking in the box.

That's one of the more useless arguments, which also has been brought up in defense of SR4. If you end up house ruling everything, at what point are you not playing the same game as everyone else? I could easily port the Shadowrun world over to the Wushu system, and there'd be no loss of story or feel. Would I still be playing Shadowrun? What happens if I converted it to GURPS or d20? Those have more of the tactical crunch that Wushu lacks. Basically, the "change whatever you like" clause is the ultimate in developer laziness: "We can't be bothered to fix anything, so we are going to make you to do it for yourself."

Close, but not quite. It's not the story, otherwise we could read a book and get the same story. It's the ability to build a story *together* that attracts people. You are building your own chronicle.

Actually, I listed several White Wolf/Storyteller games that didn't disempower players. Adventure! and Exalted are two of them. I haven't gotten into Scion yet, so I can;t comment on it, but I understand that it also focues on player empowerment.

The difference between a player-centered session and a player-centered RPG is that the first depends entirely on GM goodwill. Good or bad, it's up to the GM to empower the players. In a player-focused RPG, the players are mechanically encouraged to add to the story, and are given several means of doing so. The GM's job, in these cases, is to blend the two goals together on the fly. Since player input come sin faster and more frequently, the Gm needs to be more on his toes.

I'd add that the best GM's comes up with an idea in conjunction with the players, let everyone define their roles in and out of game, nd have everyone work together to make the best shared experience possible.

No. This is not the case.

I don't know what you think logically invalid arguments mean or do, and you certainly are using a lot of them yourself. But an argument which is logically invalid is not necessarily a bad argument.

Appeal to majority, for example, is a logically invalid argument. However it is an emotionally valid argument and if you are making an emotional argument it is the standard.

---

Now when it comes down to it, all of your arguments center on the emotional argument that you don't like what happens in the SR4 rules and therefore that the SR4 Rules are BAD! That's not a logical argument, and it is not subject to logical analysis or logical argumentation.

If you hold out the double standard that you intend to make an emotional argument and demand that everyone else take a step back and only counter only with Logical arguments, you are being disengenuous. Emotional arguments are only countered with other emotional arguments.

---

So you have the logical argument:

1. The Damage and Passengers rule on page 162 says that you can target passengers, and that they get armor from the vehicle.
2. Called Shots can (with GM agreement) negate armor for merely stupendous penalties (p. 149).
3. A long shot test can potentially succeed even if the penalties are stupidly high.

That's the argument right?

Well, logically the Damage and Passengers rules also state that the target always get Partial, Good, or Blindfire Cover. And the Blindfire rules go to page 157 where it tells us that a weapon of insufficient size automatically fails. So if the vehicle is fully enclosed (like the citymaster), you need an anti-vehicle weapon to punch through. Your one-shot example fails.

---

But we made that logical argument a long, long time ago. And you're still clamping on like a terrier. So obviously we're in emotional argument territory. Where we aren't convincing each other with page citations, because we have all the page citations. There's no more logic to be had. You've seen the logic and you refuse to accept it because you have an emotional ax to grind.

And now we make fun of you, because that's the level this argument has degenerated to! You refuse to engage with the logical arguments that say that your example is wrong, and continue to make the emotional argument that SR4 is "bad" and "seems poorly made" and shit. So yeah, we make emotional arguments right back:

You seem unreasonable.
You are a jerk.
Your mouth is filled with too much talk, and not enough cock.

-Frank

Reflect that statement in the light of your behaviour in this thread. Take into account what Frank said about emotional arguments.

I have used GM Fiat to save the villian, but I have always done it the Comics Way: The situation is such where the players don't have the villian in a nice, secure room where they strip search him, tie him up, shot hi in the head, heart, decapitate him, and stick is body in a blender. No, it is where they kill the villian, but the building begins falling down around them, or the police or army or what have you arrive right after that. The villian could be dead..or he could only LOOK to be dead. I had a villian back in SR3 who had actually, because of the "Close calls" with the players become a very low essence individual.

Now, though, here is one thing I do not see how you can go with a completely loose framework that you will tear down completely.

Try this: The Setup is: A Meteor is heading to the earth, and the players have been selected to go up and take it out. They are have already made it up into space and are en-route.

The player thrown twist: The guy who is flying the shuttle what have you decides, withut really asking or telling anyone, that he is going to change the course and go to Ares thing heading to Mars.

What do you do:
A) Remind him gently that if he does that, all human life on earth is going to be destroyed
b) Say nothing, and let the meter hit the earth
c) Forget about the whole meteor thing, and begin the trip to mars(in a shuttle, BTW, that does not have the life support or supplies to even catch up to said ares ship going to mars..so you can essentially end the whole thing right there)


More realisticly:
The Setup: The Runners have been hired and agreed to perform an extraction of a old man who also happens to be one of the rival corps leading Nano-scientists. The man has a (Stereotype!) beautiful receptionist who pretty much knows nothing except the scientists name and the department she works in.

The Player Twist: The Runners decide that, rather then extracting this creepy old dude, they would rather extract the receptionist.

What do you do:
a) Have it turn out that the receptionsit really is the one behind all the scientists research, and, in fact, was actually the scientist, not the old man the Johnson thought it was
b) Have the Johnson get angry at the runners for extracting the wrong person, shoot her infront of them, and not pay them
c)Remind the players that their characters are being paid to get the old man, and that the Johnson will not pay them if they do not bring the correct person.
d) Have the receptionist turn out to be the targets wife, and that she will not leave without him.
(Of course, no matter what, if the runners do not get the old man out, they will not get paid.)

OK, let's go after the logical argument here first. The logical argument formalizes to:

1. If a character with a larger dicepool chooses to produce a mechanical result which could be reproduced by a character with a lower dicepool,
   
2. Then the mechanical results will be the same, despite the difference in dicepools.

Which of course is a Begging the Question fallacy. The circular reasoning is broken by the fact that the person who chose to get a result which was not mechanically superior was in fact the person who got the result which was not mechanically superior. Boom: definition and conclusion in one, see Reasoning, Circular.

But hey, you've got an out. And rather than wait until you stumble upon it yourself I will just give it to you. Since every Logically Valid argument contains its conclusions within its premises, the entire concept of "Begging the Question" as a logically invalid fallacy is flawed. All logically valid arguments can be reformalized to be circular and thus the idea that a circular argument is logically invalid is a holdover from a simpler time when people didn't understand logic very well. The fact that an argument is Begging the Question is not a valid reason to discount its validity.

Sigh. Fair enough Kierkegaard, we can for now accept the logical validity of such an argument. This in terms means that we have to attack the premises of said argument rather than its structure. And since the premises and conclusions are in this case the same, we can attack any part of it and the whole thing will break like a wheel with a wedge.

Now we could attack the mechanical premises or the emotional premises. As it happens I doubt there is a single person here who doubts over much that a 16+ die pool is capable of getting 2 hits, nor do I think anyone here is willing to make claim that Fastjack is incapable of choosing a Rating of 2 for a program he produces. So let's go for the emotional premises:

Why? This is an emotional premise because it refers to "should." Cain is making the emotional plea that Fastjack's higher dice pool ought to produce a game mechanical benefit in this circumstance. I reject this claim utterly. Cain is emotionally wrong in this instance.

Fastjack selected his Rating, and he selected the number 2. He could have bought successes at Rating 4, and would have been quite likely to succeed at a Rush Job given a Rating of 5. Even 6 or 7 is well within possibility if he rushes it out twice and hopes for the best. But he chose to attempt a Rating of 2. Why? I don't know, and neither does Cain.

Maybe Fastjack is making an intentionally gimped program because he wants someone to fail at some later task. Maybe he wants to use it to impersonate a script kiddy with much worse funding. Maybe he is disguised as a mild mannered software programmer and is trying to not blow his cover by revealing how awesome he actually is. We don't know, because it's not part of the discussion.

What is part of the discussion is that Fastjack chose (for whatever reason) to make something that was not as good as what he could really make. And that another person (for whom that truly is the limit of their abilities) could crank out the same thing. I say, from a strictly emotional standpoint that this is Good.

I would regard it as a problem in the game if highly skilled individuals did not have the option of choosing to perform below their real abilities. As Cain's example shows, this is not the case in SR4. A highly skilled individual can perform at their ability or well below it if that is what they want to do. And thus a potential problem I might have had with SR4 is averted.

-Frank

...you obviously haven't dealt with the dumbass I have. You haven't had someone basically try to wrest control of your campaign away like I have. Sometimes the Nuclear Option is the only way. :mushroomcloud:

And now you're telling me how I think. Cain, I'm trying to have a civil debate with you, but you're making this extremely difficult.

Beyond that, you completely misinterpreted my point. You'll notice I stated that the GM comes up with the storyline (i.e. the framework, basis, general thought behind the game sessions), develops the plot points (potential things the players might choose to follow up on), and then adapts based on their choices. I didn't say he adapts everything to make sure the players stay on his story, or that his story in the end is more important than the player's choices or desires. I never said that. You are assuming this. I said adapt the story. Adaptation can be minor changes, or broad sweeping redesigns as needed.

Again, you miss what I've said. The players aren't reading scripts. They actively contribute to, and alter the story as it pans out. Sometimes the story the GM had in mind bears no resemblance to the story that evolves. That's just the way of it. Any decent GM lets the story evolve on it's own and provides the fluff to make it enjoyable.

And now with regards to your Citymaster. My best friend and I have taken a poll of the local 5-7 year old demographic. They didn't know what an APC was, so we used a Tank instead in the example. We asked them this:

"If you shoot at a tank with a gun to try and kill the driver, what happens?"

Almost unanimously, they said the pistol does nothing at all, because it's a tank and you're not using a good enough gun. I said almost because Jimmy was of the opinion the Tank blows up, but he's kind of a powergamer, so we can discount him as being in the minority.

On the other hand, they did say magical Wolverine bullets would go right through the tank, but as Shadowrun has no rules for that, we can discount that option entirely.

So in short, even the 5-7 year olds think your example is bogus, Cain. Thus, you're wrong.

The defense rests.

Actually, you've obliquely fallen into one of Cain's Hefalump traps, through no fault of your own. That "Not in my game" quote from me was seriously misinterpreted. I was not saying it to any player, I was saying it to Cain's odd beliefs in defense of my players. I.e. I was protecting them against Cain's attitude to non-GM'ing that they would not enjoy. Cain has once again taken words from one of us, stripped them bare of any surrounding context then dressed them up again in clothes of his own design. Cain would call this a straw man if I did it. As Cain did it, it's probably more fairly called a straw dinosaur, monstrous distortion that it is.

That's exactly what it means.

Since the rest of your arguments are appeals to emotion instead of appeals to logic, I'm going to discard all the rest. There's no point in using logic and reason to face down sheer blinding emotion.

D) Let the other players revolt, and force the guy to turn around. If they don't want to do that, then they think that a trip to Mars is more fun than the meteor, so I may as well readjust to deliver what they want.

Ryu answered the other one.

I haven't dealt specifically with your dumbass, but I have dealt with some pretty severe ones before. When gentle prodding doesn't do the trick, usually outright peer pressure will. That's how we've kept our current dumbass in line. Rather than regularily threaten to throw him out of the game (which I may be mistaken, but that's what it sounds like you are doing) we keep him in line in other ways. Like asking his wife to talk with him.

My apologies. That wasn't my intention.

What I meant was, in the games I'm referring to, the players and the GM affect the story on a more primal level, and work together to develop the plot points.

For example, in Faery's Tale, one player might suggest that when sneaking into a castle, instead of the knight being just some opposition, one player suggests that could be the sprite's old weapon master, long since fallen from grace. Suddenly the whole plot changes, because instead of sneaking it, he could challenge him to a duel for passage. That'd awake the whole castle, but by the Faery laws, they're supposed to respect it... but now, they'll be facing tricks instead of battle. Unlike most Dramatic Editing mechanics, where the player would spend point to make it stick, he'd be given a point or two for coming up with such clever derail.

I did bring up the Magic Bullet theory. Stranger things have happened. If you want a cinematic example, watch the original Batman movie.

You're intentionally ignoring and discounting any intelligent discourse coming from Frank. He, along with many others in this thread have cited the page numbers and rules debunking your Citymaster example, and you still insist it's a perfectly legal example.

Feedback is welcome and even sometimes employed in our games, however we've all been of the opinion it's best to let the game play out WITHOUT the players knowing what's happening ahead of time, or basically turning the game one way or the other by changing NPC's or what-have-you. You get more genuine reactions and situations when the players are broadsided by that plot twist they never saw coming. Not knowing where the story is going keeps our players interested, intrigued and on their toes. They're constantly guessing at what the GM might have planned, and make their plans for it. The GM, on the other hand, sometimes doesn't have a clue what's coming next, but lets the story unfold however it will, allowing the player's assumptions to generate the next line in the plot. It's a surprisingly effective way of running the game, but requires a GM who can think up entire scenarios on the fly as the game changes course.

Yes, but you can't have magic bullets in Shadowrun, so that's really irrelevant.

What, where the Joker shoots down a plane because he's got a long barrel? Ok then. Wow. I feel bad 'cause now I think you're going to try to debate this point now too. Sometimes it's better to just let things go.

The irony of your constant linking to definitions of logic grows ever clearer. An invalid argument on one side does not add validity to the other. Observe:

Arguer 1: 2+2 = 5
Arguer 2: You're an idiot!
Arguer 1: That's an "ad hominem" therefore I'm right.

See the logical fallacy in your claim, Cain? And as it so happens, Frank's threat and ultimatum is not a logical fallacy, but simply a threat and ultimatum. (One he appears able to deliver on reading recent posts).

You want a distinction of what degree is okay and what isn't? Well I can't put my finger on the line exactly, but I'd say a GM saying "Well he was wearing armour underneath his clothes that you didn't check for so the villain's still alive so there!" is reasonably considered to be on the other side of the line than "A chemically sealed tank that doesn't require windows or viewports to drive doesn't allow you a clear shot at the driver."

But as Frank pointed out, your argument amounts to "I don't like where the line is drawn" and everyone else here seems happy with that.

Yes he can. He decides to write a rating 4 program which he can pull off with bought hits quite comfortably. You're the one that chose the program to be beneath what he can do when you said he was writing a rating 2 program (which you chose because it's about the upper bound of what Mr. Lucky can reliably be expected to produce).

You weren't even aware of the rule's affect on this until I brought it up. Or else you chose to leave it out of your original example. And you also keep rephrasing what I'm saying. Mr. Lucky does not "stand a higher chance of botching." He stands a 50/50 chance of botching whilst Fastjack stands none at all.

Which leaves my point completely unaddressed. Mr. Lucky is doing what Mr. Lucky is designed to do and allowed to do by the rules - he is lucky. He has invested a huge number of points in being lucky. The fact that you don't like it is a flavour issue and if you don't like that being part of the game don't allow the character in your game.

So Mr. Lucky is in fact a gun-bunny anyway.

That makes no sense. There's a guideline on how to run modifiers on the very same page as your longshot example. It is suggested that GMs might like to use this. The only reason you can argue your rainy day shot (which is already invalid for other reasons previously stated anyway), is because you choose to refuse these guidelines so that you can say that SR4 is "horribly broken". And when the guidelines were pointed out to you by yours truly, you could only justify your ignoring of them by starting the argument that choice is bad. You, the same GM that is so vehement in attacking us all for being inflexible and authoritarian is condeming the rule book for offering a flexibility to GMs. NOT, before you say it, demanding GM Fiat, but a choice of how to play things consistently.

Why do you hate freedom?

Page reference for this optional rule, please? Mine was on Pg. 55.

So to summarise your point, you will grab onto any argument you can find anywhere at any stage in the thread in order to justify your aim of showing SR4 to be broken. Cain - your agenda is visible from Mars!

And if the pornomancer uses magic on the don to mesmerise and cloud his mind (which if I remember the build he does), then yes, he probably can get away with pissing on people.

I think that was what Cain was getting at, but that far exceeds both my heavy pushing of the "Suspension of Disbelief" meter and breaks by B.S.-o-meter.

I have always loved that scene. It makes no sense that the Joker should be able to shoot down the Batplane. It's also inexplicable how he just stands there holding out his arms in mock invitation to the missiles that explode harmlessly around him. But it makes perfect sense thematically and that's what I love - the deliberate pitting of logic vs. theme and the victory of theme. At that moment, the audience understands intuitively that we have entered a different state and it sets things up perfectly for the final showdown in the church tower.

I should so be a film critic.

-K.