There have been a number of discussions in various threads about how goofy X element of the Shadowrun mythos is. You all can probably tell that I fall heavily in the "I Believe!" camp of gameplay. Many of you are not. For those who seek a more realistic gaming experience what are your particular gripes and how have you gone about resolving them?

I beg both sides of the fence to refrain from "Ur game is lame!" flame wars. I honestly want to see how the other half lives and see what bits I can work into my game should I want to take a turn towards a gritter setting at some point.

Edit: The word "consistent" has been removed since it was used poorly.

I usually run with the "I beleive" crowd and only fix game balance issues. But I've never been able buy technomancers' magic Antenna. I've always ruled that technomancers have a natural skinlink, and can route their signal through anything they are touching. I had to make specific rules for rebroadcasting, but it worked OK. IN fact, it was actually a power boost, because it let them interface with any electronic device they touched.

The next game I run, however, is going to be run in the future I think would result from realistic assessments of natural resources. I'm going to toss peak oil and an energy crisis on top of all the rest of it, and put it in the context of a society that was only able to half-recover. One thing I never bought is how, well, stable the shadowrun setting seems despite how often worldwide calamity occurs. In shadowrun a worldwide plot to bring down the internet and the actual detonation of an EMP crashing the stock market has less effect on the world then 9-11 did on ours. The next time I run shadowrun, all the monolithic systems will be grinding to a halt, not controlling everyone's life. Everything will be falling apart at the seams. Eventually, nothing BUT shadows will be left.

Hehe... you seem to be on the verge of running the Post-Apocolyptic SR game I'd like to do one day. Hope you'll let us all know how it works out when you run it.

I find that the term "realistic gaming experience" to be an oxymoron. As long as you look at it from the perspective of your PC, it becomes realistic, what causes "unrealism" is when you choose to impose your own real world experiences to your PC's SR existance. 1+1=10? Sure, it looks unreal, but when you look at it in binary, it makes sense. If you choose to look at it through your Realism™ tainted contacts, then of couse, it is unreal.

I also find that consistency is more a matter of your GM imposing the same set of rules consistently without the need for exceptions and house rulings. Without these exceptions and house rulings to make things more "realistic" to the real life perspective, the in-game SR consistency is maintained, when in fact, fact can often seem stranger than fiction.

I believe a major part of successful gaming emerges from a consensus between players and GM. Some groups are going to use their real world (or otherwise) experience as a benchmark for game consistency. Some groups are willing to check most or all of their preconceptions at the door and accept any number of oddities, be they rules or themes, as part and parcel to gaming in Shadowrun. I see a GM forcing their preconceptions on players to be the sign of bad GMing. My question is really posed towards tables, not just the GM's, because I assume that GM's are taking their players perspective into account whenever they make a ruling.

Good house rules exist to maintain consistency with whatever consensus a group comes up with. I agree that the consistent application of rules is important to maintain in-game consistency. I disagree that house ruling as a practice inherently breaks any semblance to to SR consistency.

I'm all about the internal consistency within the premise you've set out. I'd rather play GURPS than wrestle with a ruleset and setting I want to heavily alter. You are after all paying for the setting when you buy the books.

I'm for realistic NPCs and repercussions, but in a radically different world. And Platonic Pimp, dont forget that there is no light without shadows, and no shadows without light. If everything were to fall apart, you would have a game radically different than Shadowrun.

As much as hard sci-fi is my favorite, I can totally push the "I Believe!" button for many things in SR. Gene tech requires an amount of suspension of disbelief it's not even funny (no way you could call it safe, sane, and consensual). But at the end of the day what does it matter? Sams in Bakta tanks are awesome. I fail to push the "I believe" when it it actually wrecks something. Take encryption. If RAW encryption rules are the best thing you can possibly do for data security on a cyberdeck for some reason, fine. But don't tell me people use it for wireless financial transactions.

As far as timeline/setting goes, I'm even more of a "canon Nazi" than I am when it comes to house rules. It's the background, not the rules, that's drawn me into every single RPG or wargame I've ever played. It matters more to me than any silly collection of numbers and skills and stats.

Is it silly, at times, in Shadowrun?

Sure. But who cares? It's set up like it is to allow any sort of game you want, in almost any corner of the world you want. You've got high tech spies, cowboys and indians, cowboys and Mexicans, ninja, samurai, two-gun Triad hitmen, Yakuza, smugglers of all stripes, mob wars left and right, pirates, sleek corporate killers, pimps and gangers, military action all over the globe, vat-grown monstrosities, space station action, freedom fighters and terrorists all over the place, the pawns of dragons, Indiana Jones explorer types, you name it, all in one game.

Of course there's a little background handwaving that's got to go on to make room for it all.

@Critias I really hear you on enforcing the setting. Especially since I don't think anyone plays SR4 for the exquisite mechanics. My question to you though is do you resolve the rules often not modeling the fluff?

I agree wih Critias on this. Setting is King, and it is definitely the setting that first drew me to Shadowrun, and kept me coming back for 20 years.

Like what?

And I -- for once -- don't ask that belligerently, I'm just genuinely wanting an example of what you mean.

All hail the setting, the thing that has kept me loving SR forever. The rules exist to serve the setting for me. I'm something of a cannon Nazi (though odd details change and I don't always stick ton the facts as shown in novels) but I'll change the exact dates by a few days to suit my needs.

i pretty much disregard reality and substitute my own . . so i guess believer O.o
i am the kind of guy who hands other players a new character sheet with a mundane sub standard not even mediocre human without any ware or weapons or anything else that would lift him above joe shmoe who can't do shit, if they start with believeability in a game with magic . .
in short: i don't fragging care, as long as I am having fun . . .

Bow before the almighty fun! BOW!

Personally I really like most aspects of Shadowrun, and I can push the "I Believe" button on most of the stuff that comes out. I find that the writers very rarely do anything without a decent reason.

When I was younger, I was very enamored with the Great Dragon / Immortal Elf / Earthdawn Crossover secrets, but as I grew older and my experience with the system and the setting grew, these super powerful beings began to lose their luster. Personally, I relegate most of these things to the background at best, and sometimes not even deal with it. I seem to have developed a fundamental problem with these super powerful beings shaping all of human history, (as if humans themselves could not possibly do such a thing.. oh the helpless monkeys.)

These were easy to deal with. Just don't include their super scheming. Anyone who claims any sort of knowledge about the 4th world from an In Game perspective is usually eaten by something large and scaly.

Other than that, the setting was grand.

Lately though, it seems the game is fighting with its own identity. Caught somewhere between gritty low life realism, and over the top anime stylings.

While some people like that kind of thing, I tend to have most regular people regard some wacko with kid steath legs and a balance tail as someone they wont take super seriously at face value. A kind of a self imposed freak, like when you have to go out for some god awful reason to the mall and see all the high schoolers all trying to be different from one another with one shock job after another. Sure, we're desensitized to it, and frankly don't care that much, but when asked to really deal with one of these kinds of people I really to have to stifle an internal chuckle.

SuperCyberNinjaChick gets REALLY old after a while to me, and most of my people know better than to bring one of those to the table, lest they be laughed out of the sprawl.

For me, even in the wild and crazy world that SR is, Ordinary Joes in extraordinary situations will always get a better game going.

Like a lot of the matrix rules. You actually have to house rule some things to get a matrix like what is presented in the books.

Also things like SINs shadow runners should have fake SINs and other "papers". But if you run the RAW on SIN checkers efficacy, and the fluff on frequency of scans a rating 6 SIN should fall apart within a couple hours of shopping in an A zone. Things like that. To me this means that either you nerf the fluff's description of surveilance and automation, or you house rule the SIN/SIN scanner relationship. There are sever situation where I've felt like I was forced to house rule or change fluff.

The setting is certainly a big reason I keep playing but I have to admit that I've really liked the SR mechanics of SR3 and SR4. I particularly like how quickly I've been able to get new gamers, let alone SR players, into the game and having a good time. I admittedly, haven't played the latest version of GURPS or whatever WoD is using these days but in the past they've been pretty inferior to what SR3 and now SR4 has to offer.

I don't know though, not to totally derail this thread but what systems do you all find superior to SR4?


(Aside for SR3 . It is a great rules set but I've been having a blast with SR4).

Aint that the truth. A problem SR is facing as the years go by is a growing disconnection from the original premises that spawned it and the new customers they are trying to bring in. I remember having issues adapting to SR4 in the early days because the feel of it is radically different from earlier editions. The shadows just dont seem as dark as they used to. I feel like I am always being watched in SR4, and have thus had to ignore some of the SR4 fluff in favor of the SR3 foundation (thank god it is there). I guess I wish they would avoid changes to the setting just to reflect RL changes, as we are very near to the date of the awakening (as per canon), and it will be impossible to say the two are the same.

Huh? Imo GURPS is one of the greatest rpgs of all time
Tbh i'm not a great fan of the sr4 rules, too many loopholes, inconsistencies and general 'bugs', so it needs pretty much houseruling to be playable.

And on topic, our group lowered the general abundance of magic and paranormal critters. Magicians are pretty rare and players normally don't get the option to initiate. We removed all dragons but the great dragons so an encounter with them is really scarce and they keep their flair. Other critters are also rare and try to hide from humanity as best as possible, so it's not generally known to the public that vampires exist for example.

Would you start a thread this! I've a pretty good track record for popping gamer cherries, and have failed several times to hook people SR4. Also I personally found the SR*/4 learning curve harsher than any other game I've played.

while risking to undermine the whole point of this thread, and the forum as a whole for that matter, how much have the world really changed post 9/11?

we are now at least as far away from 9/11 as current SR is from crash 2.0, and except the "peace keeping" in the middle east, and the troubles of getting on any kind of flight i cant really say that the world have changed that much the last 7 or so years.

big corp is still as eager as allways to grab as much of my cash as they can for as little service as they can provide.

only thing that have really changed is that we now have terrorists filling the threat vacume left over by the red scare.

so i wonder, what will fill the big baddie vacume left over by deus?

There is always a tendency for people to not believe that a threat is real, instead insisting that it was a myth created by some "dark force". And some expert to tell them it is so. For example, Larry C. Johnson, "a former State Department counterterrorism specialist" who published an essay entitled "The Declining Terrorist Threat" in the New York Times on July 10, 2001. In this he argued strenuously that is was a myth that moslem terrorists targeted the US and it was essentially all a myth made up by the "dark forces" of the media and the intel agencies to sell advertising and justify their budgets.

On July 10, 2001 he seemed pretty smart to some. On Sept 12 2001 some people began to suspect that there might have been less to this than they thought. Nonetheless, Mr. Johnson has been punished for his total lack of understanding of the actual terrorism threat by being made a senior policy adviser on terrorism to several Presidential candidates, all of whom also want to believe that there is no threat.

Things have changed for those who live in the the real world instead of the "let's pretend" world of Johnson and his clients. For some, it was September 11th, for others Beslan, for still others it was Madrid. For some it will come in the future. And for some, they will still not believe that people really want to kill them even when they get their throat slit.

so, i would not call that changed as much as accepted reality...

but then hindsight is 20/20 as always...

While some people prefer to live in a fantasy world where they are not threatened, surely the rest of us can no longer ignore the danger posed by bathtubs, &c.

Aye, the bathtubs and shoes with bad traction. If we don't vote for X, the REAL terrorists win.

How do the rules not model the fluff?

Um, have you tried to use the computer and hacking rules?

I have, without much issue. The possibility that I'm using them wrong is there, but it'd be surprising to me if wrong meant they worked, and right meant they don't...

Same here.
And there's also a difference between unlikely and impossible. For example in my games I let TM act on nearly all electronic devices by sending electromagnetic waves that'll convert into current in the wires (kinda like when a cellphone messes up with an audio speaker) and have the desired outcome.
I will also allow the TM to "read" data transmitted through wires by touching the wire and feeling the EM perturbation caused by the current going through the wire. But I won't allow the TM to "read" without touching the wire, because there's no way to catch the perturbation from more than a few centimeters (maybe more in some cases, but not very far).

Even putting magic aside (replacing TM with machines), the first two are extremely unlikely (especially the first one) while the third one is simply impossible.

so, any of your TM's tried to stick his fingers into a wall-socket power-outlet yet? O.o