Ok, either I missed it somewhere, or..the Eurovan has gone AWOL from this edition. Is this the ultimate Nerfing of the great design that has gotten worse in each printing since the RBB?

If it has, can I get some help converting it to the 4th edition? If it is in the current edition, please tell me where it is that I missed it! It has always been my favourite rigger vehicle, and I have stuck with it despite the nerfings in Rigger 2, and Rigger 3.

Take the Bulldog Step Van. Change the name. There you go.

There is the RV in Arsenal, too. I don't recall the name, but that could work for the Eurovan if you wanted it to.

...Bulldog & Eurovan were two different vehicles. One was basically described as being a UPS delivery truck, the other a mid to high end passenger van. They each also had different handling and performance attributes.

Umm... nerfing? The Eurovan was the modern version of the VW bus, they put it in just to be cute, and in case someone wanted to play a neo-hippie or one of those all-too-common luddites who play future characters nostalgic for the things that the players themselves are nostalgic for today. The Eurovan was a gimick, and it was not a powerful vehicle.

The Bulldog has been, and still is, The Shadowrunner Van™. It looks like a nondescript delivery van, so nobody will take any notice of you, almost no matter where you go. And it hauls a buttload which would be used for cargo in regular business, but can play host to ridiculous amounts of armor and weapons for a shadowrunner.

...actually, that was more how I viewed the Super Kombi which had several variants including an RV ("Westphala" Kamper), pickup (Kombi), and a passenger van ("classic" microbus). The Eurovan in RL fits in more with the slightly upscale "soccer mom" crowd.

Then change a couple of stats. It's not rocket surgery. The main thing is the description anyway. The numbers can easily be altered to fit.

...already said my peace on vehicle design in 4th ed. Too many arbitrary blanks to fill in.

This is a conversion of third edition vehicles (including rigger 3) to 4th ed rules on Knasser's page

It's there.

You know, not everyone wants to mechanically model the physics of each situation (You included). All the things they left out can easily be filled in by common sense and GM decision.


Yeah, all the SR3 Vehicles were redone by Crackerjack and are hosted on Knasser's Site

...still would not have hurt just to provide a basic "wireframe" to start from. Wouldn't have needed to be as extensive as Rigger 3. Just the basic attributes (including cargo/passenger/fuel load) and maximums for the primary vehicle classes.

The way it is now is kind of like the "6 year old can carry a Panther Cannon because it has no weight" argument. In this case its the Mercury Comet that can go coast to coast on one tank of petrol at 1,100KmH.

Maybe they do need a Rigger 4 after all...

If they have to spell out whether someone who's three feet tall can fire a weapon that's 5 feet long, then humanity is doomed. Also, the core book would be a multivolume encyclopedia costing $1,000 to spell out every tiny stupid common sense thing like that. By the same token, if we can't figure out, based on a few examples of vans, what a van should look like, then what does that say about our GM population? People seem to think that if the GM can't prove his rulings with a page/line cite to the rulebook, he can't make them. People seem to think that GM discretion is some kind of crime against the players. It's not. It's the whole basis of the game.

And be careful what you wish for. If they actually filled in all the little blanks left up to GMs, we'd just have another SR3. We don't need another SR3, because nobody has ordered us to burn those books, we can still play that game if we want to. I'd rather have a new game that isn't quite as legalistic and moves a lot faster.

...some (not myself) feel it is. Been on that road before.

I do not see why just a simple framework (maybe something akin to the character generation mechanic) would be such a bloat to the game. Heck, a GM always has the "discretion" not to use it if he or she doesn't want to.

I know they outlined rules for how long you could drive before refueling, they just also decided to make it very general, simple, and streamlined (key word for SR4). And come on, KK, you would never allow a 3yr old NPC to shoot a Panther in your game (even if it was a Troll).


Very true, every so often I get nostalgic for the old day and the TN(2) to hit someone.
And if I ever want to, I still have all the books, and can play in as short a time as it takes to gather a group.


It would be a bloat to the game because it would take up space. If they had to make another source book specifically for riggers, not only would I loose over $20, but they would want to include a multitude of other things to justify the entirely separate book. THAT would bloat the game. Maybe someday in the future they can come up with a customization book, where custom build rules for everything for fake IDs, Vehicles, Guns, Gear, even lifestyles are outlined. I would much rather have a custom lifestyle building book like Sprawl Survival Guide than a Rigger book.

...hmmm...[taps fingers on desk...] ....meet Leela ²

Seriously: On the whole thing about vehicle design. The reason I prefer a framework over just "guessing" is I find it a timesaver in that it sets both a basic standard and limits. Just like using a wireframe in 3d modeling. I don't have to spend a lot of time (that I don't have) building the 3d model from scratch. I can take the frame, pose, it, morph it, and add the details I want to make the finished rendering. It most likely will never come to this in 4th ed, and that will always be one of my disappointments.

WAY back in the Rigger Black Book, while BullDog did have higher CF then the Eurovan, the Eurovan had higher performance in some areas, that made upgrading actually suck up less CF. It also had the bench seats which were easily ripped out for more CF under the RBB rules. AND it had a better fuel economy. Rigger 2 slashed its CF, reduced its fuel economy, and reduced its load. Rigger 3 reduced it a third time. Each successive printing you could do LESS with it, despite more options. I always liked the Eurovan because it was the "soccer mom" van. Do you pay attention to minivans on the road around you? Or, now, SUV's? To me, that was why I took it: because, sure it might not have been a Step Van, but it started off faster, and was a decent thing to customize. And, that's the thing: the picture was like a Lumina or other mini-van. Not the VW Micro-bus.

Non-useful commentary:

Rocket Surgery is now a new Active skill in my campaign. I'm not sure if that means surgery on a rocket or if it's referring to very fast surgery.


I agree that SR4 can be fustrating because it feels like the designers left so much out. But I'm beginning to believe that it was a calculated design decision to serve two purposes:
A. Release a functioning coherent game system in a timely fashion. The errata and faq notes show that many rules were left out because the designers felt that they were to "special case" and weren't exactly vital to the game's overall structure.
B. Let players work out the crunchy bits if they wanted to.
C. Similiarly it made it easier for additional rules to be plugged in once people were comfortable with core rules (Aug, Ars, etc).

I've liked it because my least fond memories of previous editions of SR (and the cancer causing game) were the epic legal arguments that spawned because players had all sorts of books and crap to point to and say "Well there you go, it's obvious that the designers intended for a 3 year old to fire a panther if she has the right bioware and 3 points of magical... etc etc" A good GM should be able to quash those arguments and move on but than it's frustrating to players because they think the GM is power crazy. But I'm sure this whole argument has be rehashed a billion times with every release of every edition so I'll move on.

All that said, and with the acknowledgement that I haven't read Arsenal, it does seem like vehicles deserve a little more love than they've gotten so far. I've always been a rules light kinda guy (half a game session wasted on rules mongering made me so) and my personal interest has been on balancing play tempo with difficulty but I recognize that other players may want or need more rules depth than that.

A general customization or alternative rules book would be interesting although my interest in buying it would be rather limited. I get by just fine with: Sedan/Tank/scooter goes X speed, accelerates X, has a body of X, plan accordingly.

I find the opposite true. When there are modifications and customizations I spend hours tweaking every last thing so that I am 100% sure that I got as much stuff into the vehicle as possible. Maybe that is just me, but still I feel it is just better to write up some better than normal stats and beg your GM on hands and knees to approve

Well, I would have liked more vehicles (for variety) but I'm sure some people would want more martial arts, or more gear, etc, etc. I believe Arsenal is quite balanced in content. Of course, If I had been the editor I would have limited a little bit the Demolitions section (which was a tad too hi-res for my liking) and presto! wordcount available for one more ground vehicle of each type.

Anyway, the somewhere there they left open a quick way to make new vehicles, akin to something I have already been doing in my game: Common sense => add some / take some.

i.e: take the Bulldog, take 10-20% armor, add 10-20% speed, add one or two modifications (ammenities, for instance), tweak the price; voila! the Eurovan's there. You could even tweak down a Land Rover to get the same result a soccer-mom van.

And it's a pity I haven't got the books here at work, that would threaten my continuity here, or at least the continuity of my work, but stats would be ready it in less than 5 minutes. For fluff cut and paste from 3ed.


Still I understand, I also love vehicles and better when they are there to be chosen from. I guess we have perfect material for a "web-enhancement" (runs!)


Cheers,

Max

...y'now, I just read through the Arsenal rules on demolitions last night. Pretty thick with the "realism" I must say just to do what in 3rd ed was a fairly simple task - place a kilo or five of your favourite plastique compound at a key point or two on what you want to blow up, roll your associated knowledge skill (Structural Engineering, Materials engineering, Physics what have you) add any bonus dice to your demolitions roll (+ task pool if any) and make your Demolitions test. That seemed pretty straightforward.

In one section of the 11+ pages of the new demolitions rules, application of Trigonometry was even discussed. Yet it is believed that including a few basic frameworks for vehicle design would make things too cumbersome.

...whatever...