Hi all,

I have been a long time fan of Shadowrun. It always pained me that SR had a great setting saddled with horrible rules. I've been very excited to see the rules changes. Here are a few of my thoughts. I'd love some feedback and ideas please.

1. Combat is still slow. I tried getting rid of resisting damage, but it was unfair to heavy body types. Now I just rule of 4 all of that unless the players want to try to save their hides. The book has some good suggestions, anyone found anything that works well?

2. Why are the PDF files so expensive? Hey, Catalyst! Make Them Cheaper. Way cheaper... If you make them $5, everyone I know would buy them. PDF files aren't as handy as a book. They get lost. You can't read them without a computer. They're cumbersome to use in play... Their perceived value is far less than that of a book. Besides, it's not like you have to pay to have them made. Sheesh.

3. Is it just me or is the setting kind of lacking now? It seems that the SR setting is branching beyond Seattle, but at the expense of any real depth for all these new settings. Oh, and the history in the beginning of the book isn't as good any more. It has to skim over too much. I just bought Corporate Enclaves..... Nothing about Seattle. Nothing about the day to day life of Joe Average in 2070. I was hoping for something like the Sprawl Survival Guide. I'm not too impressed with Augmentation either. They were both expensive and not that interesting.

4. Rigging and Decking rock now. It's amazing and wonderful. Job Well Done.

Thanks all!

-Tony

For Seattle you should have got Runner Havens. I do recommend Arsenal, but I liked Augmentation too.

Combat is quite detailed (SR has always been on the "more detailed" side of the gaming spectrum) It still is still faster and much more balanced than previous editions, it takes a lot of practice to make it *fast*.

On the pdf part I believe (and this is just me speaking) that the most pricey part of the publishing process is not the paper. You do have to pay writers, editors, artists, designers, distributors, etc, etc. I do find them expensive as well, but the exchange rate may have something to do with it in my case.

Cheers,

Max

Uh, there's guys like me who own only the mainbook in hardcover, you know (a decision I regret, incidently; I keep misplacing it and end up just using the PDFs). They'd be losing out on stupid amounts of money if they charged only $5; even if you have a terrible memory it's easy to print off cheatsheets of damage codes and price lists to hand out even before taking into account the existence of laptops. With my laptop, a wireless router and a printer in my room I can create cheatsheets of things like damage codes on the fly, use diceroller programs for more tedious tasks like extended tests and get distracted by holostreet jokes here on dumpshock when I should really be running my game. You're crazy if you don't think that would cannibalize some of the hardcover sales, which would be devestating if they were only making $5 per PDF.

Got all books in hardcover accept GM screen, easier to drag to my games and back and lug around the house. If had a laptop might be different but even then I'd still pick up both. Don't mind paying a fair price to keep one of my favorite games alive. I'm sure $5 supplements would'nt keep a small company afloat long. And I for one think quality of 4th is definetly a step above 3rd and worth it.

Runner Haven's is on Seattle. The entire books is basically Seattle and Hong Kong. Just thinking out loud here but Shadowrun has always been a fairly small market and most of the people playing today have been playing for years. SR just isn't a game that attracts a lot of new blood. Just using myself as an example I have probably a half dozen books that focus to one degree or another on Seattle. I just don't need any more. Same thing with day to day life. Corp Enclaves does have a fairly good writeup on a Japanese wageslave which is different, and different is useful to me.



4th ed is the first edition where I actually enjoy playing a matrix monkey. I'm in complete agreement here.

I'd say all the indexing and search functions associated to the pdfs take quite a bit of time, and thus would be worth the extra money.. I know it is to me, as it helps me to look things up faster there. Once I have a page # I can have everyone open their books and look at a rule. The time and effort costs us, but I think its worth it.

I don't mind paying for the pdf or the books.

Buying the books used to annoy me because for a long time they used a crappy publisher and SR books were notorious for falling apart at the bindings. Their current bindings are very much improved.

And for GMing I've found that pdfs are exceptionally useful for preparing adventures. Being able to text search is great.

I have to second the notion that Fourth Edition's fluff seems to be lacking something, but it isn't anything that I can quite put my finger on.

Oh, and Runner Havens should have been called New Hong Kong, if you want to run a camapign in Seattle you really should buy one of the older sourcebooks.

It's true that the SR4 line is leaning away from books like New Seattle and the Denver boxed set. Instead, books like Runner Havens are updating multiple settings in a way similar to Shadows of North America. Personally, I like the fact that I now have information on multiple cities, the key players, movers and shakers. I don't distress that I no longer know what store is on the corner Aurora and NW Market.

The shift to a more global view that gives GMs a framework to tell their stories without fleshing out every street corner works for me. Emergence did a great job of globe trotting with their stories and events. By having a prisoner breakout in one corner of the world, coupled with industrial accidents elsewhere, there is a much more realistic representation of the world. If every event that was worth caring about happened in Seattle, the world would feel lopsided.

Additional books have expanded the city listing for SR4, and will continue to do so for at least 2 more books, IIRC. Beyond that, the SR Missions team laid out a rather sizeable amount of information for the goings on in Denver, and included nearly 50 restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. I'd expect similar results from the continuing Missions campaigns.

-----------

To the other topics:

The cost of PDFs is a reasonable expense in my mind. If you don't want to pay the cost of the PDF, then buy the book. I personally enjoy having both and can reference the PDFs while I'm at work or travelling when books would be awkward. At the gaming table, I have copies of the books on hand. With the exception of my 5 SR4 books, I have 2 copies of all the rules books and 1 of each of the setting books. These are my GM and player copies. Some of my players have their own copies, but when I am running games at a Con or doing intro missions at the FLGS, I like to have an extra copy for a new player to look at. This way they can decide which books they need now and what they want to purchase later.

Combat is all a matter of experience with the system and the number of players you have. I've had a running fight with a group of 5 runners go on for 4 hours as they transition from standard combat to Vehicle combat and back again. On the other hand, I've had fights end in under five minutes. New players get cheat sheets to speed up combat until they have a firm grasp on the rules. After that, we play fast and loose with the DP modifiers. If you have specific questions or critiques about the combat system, let me know and I will try to help you address them directly.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I don't ahve a problem with Shadowrun's expanding into other cities, I just have an intense dislike for the treatment that Seattle got in New Hong Kong.

People are always gonna hate Runner Havens 'cause it wasn't a Seattle book.

For what it's worth all my friends who never played SR before rather liked the Seattle section. It's not like all 58 pages are garbage, you know. I'm not saying the old guard should be forgotten or that it really excuses the book's faults (I do think that Seattle is a bit lacking in terms of plot hooks), but on the other hand there's a lot of sheer inertia behind the setting to wrestle with and I think it gets the job done well enough.

I like Runner Havens because it was not a Seattle book. First time I did not fall asleep while reading a city book. And I usually devour everything connected to SR, if I can get my greasy fingers on it.

Yeah, maybe it's because Seattles been with me as a default setting for like 18 years now, but I had no problem with it not being the main focus of RH, or the main setting of SR4 at all.
I still haven't gotten around to give Hong Kong a thouruogh read, but, without disliking the Seattle-part at all, my favourites got to be Caracas and Istanbul/Constantinople, precisely because they were kinda vague. The way they were presented, they offer enough info to get a general feel for the place, and give a GM some idea for the kind of runs that can go down there, but don't clutter it up with too many canon NPCs and stuff. Also, I liked the feeling of those places.

re: combat: I think the "new" rules make it smoother, but don't expect some kind of quantum leap. As others have already said, part of it is experience with the system. Another factor are the players (incl. the GM). If everybody spends half an hour drawing diagrams, devising strategies, and calculating and counter-checking different pros and cons for every single shot, then yeah, that can take time. I'm not saying you should put your players under some sort of shot-clock, but a little reminder that combat is supposed to be a nightmare of bullets, adrenaline, ricochets, shrapnnel, blood and death can go a long way...

You can print out multiple reference copies. You can back them up to a CD/DVD/etc. You can redownload them if you "lose" them. You get updated copies when we correct the book. You can print only the material you want. You can cut and paste into your own documents. You can search them electronically for keywords [and you can search multiple books at once.]

There are many upsides to PDFs [as there are downsides, of course] -- some of them may not be that important to you, but they are important to the people that buy them.

Our PDFs are priced at around the market standard, and are available more inexpensively if you buy them as the PDF/Print pre-order combo. If we sold them at the price you're suggesting, we would need to sell many, many more to make the same amount of money. Obviously, Catalyst does not pocket the full price of a PDF -- some of that goes to WizKids, some of it goes to the credit card vendor or PayPal, and when FanPro was selling them on other sites [like DriveThruRPG], they also got a cut of the sales. Just like the sale price of a print book is divided between publisher/distributor/retailer [and further subdivided beyond that at each level], the sale price of a PDF is divided up.


As the person that makes most of Catalyst's PDFs [and gets paid for it], I assure you that it *is* work on top of what is normally done to produce a book, and that selling PDFs is part of the way that RPG companies can manage to produce RPG books on the razor-thin profit margins that they currently have.

...I have no issue with the price on the PDFs. I look at it as not having to lug 20 - 30 KG of books around to each session. For me that is a huge benefit and definitely worth the price. Heck 25$ US for Arsenal, that is cheap when you consider the convenience of a fully bookmarked file you can download to your 1.5 KG notebook comp.

I totally agree. Makes more room in my bag for OOP sourcebooks. Really, the other way I look at it is this:

Shadowrun is, in the scheme of things, a tiny game. Sure it's the 3rd most popular RPG on the market but that's compared to D&D and WoD. Other than those two systems everything else (including Shadowrun) is small potatoes. The release pace of source books is slow enough that I can comfortably afford to spend 25$ on the PDF and another 30 when the hardcopy hits the shelves. It boosts Shadowruns sales, which means that it's that much more likely we'll continue to see source books. I think the quality of Catalyst's offerings in general make them more than worth the cost.

I can't say that I care for Runner Havens that much.

Basically, Hong Kong is wonderful, the mini-locales are decent, but Seattle is straight boilerplate. What I don't like about Seattle the most is, with a small amount of white out, it can easily become any other North American sprawl. It fits Edmonton and Boston and Bangor just as readily as anywhere else, which is a serious problem. It's not a core location, it's a generic sprawl. And apparently, this was done on purpose.

Hong Kong cannot be swapped out. Hong Kong is what I wanted Seattle to be: a living, breathing, vibrant cityscape. Instead, where Hong Kong is inspired and bold, Seattle is insipid and bland.

Personally, I like the new approach that's being had with the new setting source books. I like having multiple resources in one purchase, as it gives me the freedom to expand my game at any given moment. I mean, what happens if my players were to piss off some major mob syndicate? I can open RH and grab a new location, have their last remaining Contact save their hoop and toss 'em on a freight ship, Their leaving port while the Mob turns the city over trying to track them down. IMHO, versatility wins every time.

OK, you know..I have to say that I like Runner Havens. Why? Because, honestly, I know about Seattle already. And you know what, it covers all the stuff that is needed: the major gangs, the barens, the neighborhooods, important places. I do not think Seattle is a generic Sprawl..I just think that Seattle is the icon f what a North American Sprawl is like. It was the first published, so when peple looked for examples, it was thefirst place they looked at. Also, you know what, when I GM, I like VAGUE. Vague means "GM, you have freedom", specific actually limits the GM.

And, I will say this: I feel Riggers have gotten gimped, still...DAMNIT! I want my Drive by Wire and structural instability mods on my combat bike again!

Yes Cain, we know. We know because you take every opportunity to pass of your bloody review at every opportunity. But that's okay.

I freaking hate PDF, maybe I'm doing it wrong but even on a laptop it seems like a pain in the ass to find or do anything. Most of my players have PDF (can't buy the core book where I'm at) and they all keep trying to steal my hardcover away from me.

Until they start selling cheap eBook readers I'm probably going to keep using dead paper books.

They fixed the binding thing? I had to use super glue to make mine stop falling apart.

I agree with the previous posts. Seattle is freaking boring. As a guy who has never played Seattle up until a few months ago (sue me, I wanted to be different... since 2nd ed) I found the source material lacking. The Ork Undergroud in particular should have rated a whole chapter, complete with maps and some flavor pictures.

God, where the hell are the maps.

I'm really digging 4th ed but the lack of mapage is getting tiresome. I'm getting tired of printing out GoogleMap's and telling my players "Well uhm... like this but with trolls." Oh well, I'm sure that's a cost thing.

All that bellyaching aside, I love 4th ed. I love it more now that 4th ed D&D is the unholy spawn of the Dark Prince himself. I love that they've given some thought to Asia aside from marking it "Japancorps Here!". I love the fact that I was able to get two brand new SR players (one new to RPG's in general) up and running in one game session, having a blast by session two. I also love how everything is more or less intergrated and no archetype is struck by the feeling that they're playing a different game than the rest of us.

No, I don't mind that New Hong Kong wasn't a "Seattle Book", in fact overall I like the book, I just think that the Seattle section could have been better written by a bunch of meth addicted monkeys banging on broken typewriters.

At first I hated the pdfs, they were horribly slow and made my system unstable.

These days I'm finding them much more useful. Maybe it's because I changed my reader, have had to use pdfs for uni or the quality has just improved, but these days I'm a buy both SR fangirl...

Oh, and I quite like Runner Havens

I think if PDFs make your system unstable the problem is mostly with your system...like there's probably spyware or something eating all your system resources.

It's been a while since I've used it but isn't Adobe Reader usually doing exactly that? IIRC it's installing all sorts of permanent services and loves to call home. If PDFs appear to render sluggish, you might want to try an alternate viewer like Ghostview or Sumatra PDF

I changed from Adobe Reader to PDF-Xchange viewer and all my pdf problems went away...just like that...so I'm fairly convinced the problem was adobe

I'll look at the other suggestions though...thanks

adobe reader is just a mess, its so bloated that its not even funny...

sumatra looks interesting, but on windows i use foxit reader

but when it comes to reading pdfs i would really want a A4/usb letter sized eink screen.

if one have to scroll the pdf at all, it fails for use in game sessions imo.

and printing isnt a option imo, for going pdf would be to save on the mass of dead trees i have to carry around.

Actually, Adobe Reader can be necessary for some protected PDFs using Adobe-specific encryptions but for just anything else alternative PDF readers should work and are in generel much more resources-friendly.
My personal favorites:

• Foxit Reader (Windows)
• Evince (Linux, comes with GNOME desktop)
• KPDF (Linux, more functions than Evince)

1280x1024 (or larger), PDF reader in full-screen mode, set to "fit page" should result in pretty much A4 size vertically.

maybe so, but then i have lately found myself arguing that display makers should have used the Ax standard when sizing screens rather then the silly x" silliness that they use these days.

yep, i know im nuts...

1. I think slow combat is just apart of the game. i really don't know of any tabletop or pen and ink RPGs that have "quick" battles. having people on the same page and who are really aware of what thier characters can do, and at least a basic understanding of what the rules are like helps. also, in our group we usualy have two "GM-class" people involved (myself and my friend Limited Infinity), so other players can ask questions and get official answers. two laptops with the PDFs, a hardcopy of the corebook, and a 3-ring binder of selected rule pages help cut down time needed to look up obscure rules, too.

3. heh, we've been running in Chicago, actualy. a small oversight in the timeline, sure, but its fun.

most "quick" battle systems seems to do something like roll or die/out of battle, with the player characters having some limited way of avoiding those (point pool or similar).

beyond that the only way i can think of speeding up combat is by removing detail and player options.

movement? dont bother
cover? dont bother
attack options like different fire rates on guns? dont bother

and the list continues...

thing is, isnt these kinds of options the exact reason why we play SR rather then snakes and ladders?

Savage Worlds. Wushu. And, by reputation, ORE and Risus. All four have reputations for blazingly fast combat resolution. I've only played Savage Worlds and Wushu, so I can say that those two make SR4 combat look like a slug with arthritis.

Does anyone know how SR4 combat stacks up against nWoD or Exalted? I'd say that it's about the same as D&D 3.x, although YMMV.

Only familiar with nWoD from your list, in comparison to which Shadowrun does run more slowly I'll admit, but in return it actually works as a combat system. nWoD - I despise it for bringing in new stuff that I want whilst simultaneously throwing out old stuff that I'd like to keep. The combat system is awful. Imo.

D&D 3.5 plays faster than Shadowrun in my experience though perhaps down to the fact that I had the entire system memorised and had a fat stack of prepared monster statistics with calculated attack bonuses. However, it takes longer as well because it can take so long to grind a beholder down to 0 hit points. The now you're fine, now you're dead health system is part of that as once things start to go bad in Shadowrun, they can go bad very fast in deed.

Exalted is different from SR. It *can* go a little faster, but the fact that you're rolling again to see how much damage you actually do after you hit somebody, but before they resist it tends to slow things down. Then, you've got the fairly obscene numbers of charms (comparable to feats in D20) in the game to keep track of. Exalted also rewards players for giving flowery descriptions of their actions (stunting), which adds to the RP element, but substantially slows down the part where you declare your action.

If you've got a group that gets into Stunting and accumulates (or creates) a lot of charms, then the game can really bog down. If you've got a group that's just playing with things out of the box and focuses on more passive charms, then it's fairly comparable in speed.

All in all, it comes down to personal preference. Cain's and others views on SR4 have become obvious, they enjoy naysaying the game and products. I play D&D 3.5, Palladium, oWoD, and SR4 regularly enough to say that I am equally conversant in all of the systems. All of the systems have the possibility for combat to be wrapped up in a single round of actions (less than 5 minutes) or to take minutes of in-game time (an entire 4 hour session). The two primary factors in SR come down to the readiness of players when their turn comes up and the number of combatants on the board. Obviously, the threat that the combatants offer can change a lot of the details but a skilled GM can keep the flow and pace of the game from bogging down.

Knasser mentioned beating down a beholder to 0 hit points can take a long time, but I am fairly sure that his players aren't dragging their feet in the third round and begging for it to just be over already. Some fights take longer, but the time balances against the rhythm to keep players interested. In one of Fenris' D&D games, he gives out action points for interesting descriptions of a character's actions--this keeps the involvement of the players in their characters in a longer fight so that it isn't just "I roll to hit, I do 12 points of damage." Likewise, when I am playing more cinematic Shadowrun, I use the 4+ optional rule, but have 4s only count for Critical Successes. This means that the cinematic flare happens more often in those games and I can have adepts running along walls shooting people and hackers displaying little birds around their enemies heads after hitting them like a mack truck with an attack program.

Long story short, for me the combat system isn't slow and tedious unless the players and GM let it be. If everyone wants to be involved and focussed on what is happening, the time passes and no one knows whether it took 5 minutes or an hour and no one really cares.

Like I said, I've personally found it to be about the same, but YMMV of course.



Now here's where I'm confused. I'm familiar with Wushu, which is basically just a stunting system. And it runs *fast*. Granted, it doesn't even try to be as tactical as Shadowrun, but it does run fast and smooth. Is there no "scene cap" in Exalted? No limit to the number of details you can add, which encourages players to make extended speeches?

People throw a fit when I bring up this comparison, but Savage Worlds, with or without minis, handles large numbers of combatants quite easily. I threw 50+ natives at a party in a Pirates of the Caribbean game last week, and it took less than 25 minutes.


The slow and tedious part for me is waiting around. If you've got only 1 IP, you'll be sitting around on your thumb for a good part of the battle. In that respect, I prefer the other systems, which allows even slow characters to act every round.

http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/750

To all the people who disliked Runner Haven for not including more info on Seattle I would have to say I would be more angry if I had to pay more money for another book that just rehashed what was previously writen. Seriously you get to the point of how the hell are you to reinvent the wheel with that city. You already have your locations and 'hoods mapped out. I do wish that they could have done more with the individual nieghborhoods and there ratings listed in new seattle. I think the only thing that can be done is treatments for who the players are what care the current trends. A more who is vying for what and whom. Which we got in Runners Havens.

You can't have a system that's both fast and detailed. You can "optimize" a system so that you need less dicerolls, so that you don't need to remember one different ruleset for each action, but you can't have a system that will allow you to resolve a whole combat scene with one easy dice roll while taking into account everything and adding some flavor to the game.

If there was, all games would use the same perfect system. But as there isn't, each game will choose a system that fits best the way it's meant to be played.
Wushu will have very simple and fast rules so that you can have a lot of battle scene and a lot of fun without thinking too much. The drawback is that it won't be as tactical or realistic as what you'd get with complex rules, but that's not what the game aims for, so that's ok.
Shadowrun's combat is made to be tactical, simulationist and somehow realistic. You need to be able to describe your actions in detail (not just "I shoot" but "I get up, shoot that guy once in the head then roll toward that crate for cover and duck behind it") and each and every part of this description should have a determined impact on the game system (to be realistic and fair). That's why you end up with a system that's quite complex.
But if you want Shadowrun's combat scene to be like Wushu's, then maybe it'd be better for you to play with Wushu's rules.

I don;t think there's much of anyone who dislikes RH for not including more on Seattle. Some of us might say that we wish they'd included anything on Seattle at all, since most of the Seattle section can be cut-and-pasted into just about every other sprawl out there. A less extreme statement would be that, in comparison to the very well-done Hong Kong chapter, the Seattle section is bland, generic, insipid, and (deliberately?) designed to represent nowhere in particular.

Now, I'm not simply naysaying the entire book, since there are sections in there I really admire. Seattle simply isn't one of them. In fact, Seattle on the whole is poorly done. There's a few bright flashes-- like the ACHE-- but on the whole, the entire section is just boilerplate.
Edit:

Once again, Savage Worlds. It's at least as detailed as SR4 is, with about as many combat options available, plus a lot of flexibility in the Test of Will and Trick maneuvers. And it runs many times faster. You *can* have fast and detailed, there are several systems out there that advertise just such a thing; and many systems that promise it but don't deliver. Savage Worlds is just one example of a system that delivers. Just because SR4 fails to deliver doesn't mean it's impossible, or that SR4 is a bad system.

I played some games with Savage Worlds and - even if I liked them and understand that some people can prefer using them to play Shadowrun - I don't share your opinion about the level of detail.

combat is not that slow. And it is faster than 2nd/3rd.



as others have said, you have to pay the writers, authors, editors, etc plus pay for the website, the lights, payroll, the cons, etc.



the sourcebooks other than basic books have good information about various places around the globe.



I agree. I just cant wait for "unwired" (or whatever they call the book), for the more advanced rules.

dog

Skim (Mac OS X)

Excellent for adding additional notations, highlighting, and tons of other useful features.

PDF-Xchange Viewer is good too.

Part of that comes out in the Test of Wills and Trick systems. A Trick, especially, can represent a number of things, which you can detail however you like. For one, a Trick can represent a feint, which the SR4 rules doesn't have. Or, it can represent the old: "What in the world is that behind you?!" stunt, which still works; you also can't represent that under the SR4 rules. I could go on and on, but I think you get my point.


That's not much of a counterargument. "Sure, it stinks; but it doesn't stink that bad."

I miss pools.

The "something" could be Vista.

BTW, I think the PDFs are great. You can search, use bookmarks, copy and paste for personal use (huge if you are a GM), and we got the full text of Arsenal about 2 months before the street date.

The first version (or three, it's been a while) of the SR4 PDF was an abomination. I don't know about system instability, but pages could take up to ten seconds to load on a reasonably fast machine (I was using Preview.app at the time, as I still am). A new version was released within a few weeks that fixed the issue.

Can't speak for any of the other SR4 PDFs. The other PDFs have been fine in my experience.


Do I take this to mean that Catalyst has not chosen to pursue DTRPG et al. as resellers?

~J