It's not that hard to ignore the metaplot, and just use the SR4 rules in your SR1-3 setting.

My mileage syncs with yours. Focusing on core books and then building the world around that was the smart move.

I'm seeing the word "retcon" bandied about and it's becoming clear that the definition of that word is not understood. Retroactive continuity implies that through some sort of process or deus ex machina (ie: Crisis on Infinite Worlds for you DC Comics readers) events that happened in the past were "scrubbed out." That they never occurred. That is not the case with 4th edition's setting. Every event that happened in 1st through 3rd editions happened in the time line presented in 4E. However, because Catalyst (wisely) has been pumping out products that center around rules rather than setting (the old crunch vs. fluff debate) we don't yet have a solid grasp of the state of the world in 2070/71. We've only been getting snippets of fluff from Jackpoint conversations and what we can make about the two core settings books.

The claim that plot lines have been left dangling from 3rd ed. is laughable. It's a role-playing game. Plot lines are always left dangling. You as a player are expected to fill in the gaps either in-game or in your imagination.

Dunklezhan's death, the overthrow of Lugh Surehand, the death of Kyle Haeffner... those are not reboots. They are plot points resulting in setting change. A reboot would be "it's 2070 and Dunklezhan is President and elves never existed."

Debates about 4th edition rules mechanics are for another topic and have nothing to do with setting, plot or anything else in this thread. But I will say this: If I'd brought 2nd or 3rd ed. to my group of novice gamers I would have been chucked out the room for a) a game with overly complicated rules and b) dated technological and sociological references. If people want to moan and groan about the industry dying (and I haven't seen numbers to support that) then wouldn't one think that holding on to the old way of doing things and not presenting a system that novice gamers (or people who don't have the time to memorize tomes and charts of rules mechanics) can understand would be the proverbial dagger to the heart? Pandering to the "old timers" or the "old gamers" and the conservative "I don't like change, it irritates me" crowd is the fastest way to make a product disappear. It's what has kept the traditional superhero comic in a slowly-fading slump while indie and non-superhero books have grown audiences.

You and I differ in what reboot means. When you reboot your computer it doesn't erase your hardrive it just clears the RAM so you can start new programs going, it doesn't remove the old ones. Just puts away the stuff you were working on and lets you work on something new. Big D's death killed the Mr. Darc plotline, therefore the writers could move on to something else like the Mob War or Deus, in my book that is a reboot.

Sorry, but the change is complete and absolute. The only similar thing I see is that they kept d6's, and a few names. To prove this statement, I challenge you to try converting some old rules material to SR4. Guess what, you can't do it without a major overhaul. In fact, Fanpro/Catalyst basically says it's impossible; there's an official list on the SR4 main page listing which books are obsolete, and which are not.

Even Bull himself said it was comparable to a total conversion to d20. It was a post made here on Dumpshock, but the search function has gone wonky on me, so you'll need to look it up yourself. Bottom line: it's a totally different game engine, with totally different mechanics.


Kevin Siembieda takes it to a new level. He's gone after people on online forums for not totally loving his product, and has a reputation for not handling criticism well. He's threatened lawsuits over fan conversions of Palladium settings. I don't think Peter is anywhere near that bad; during his tenure as assistant line developer, I've seen some about-faces come about as a result of ruckuses here on Dumpshock. Then again, there's that recent development over metavariants in RC; he seems to be pretty stubbornly clinging to his own work, even when faced with the mechanicall problems that appear. That's a new development, though; I'm still waiting to see how that plays out.


To put it simply, while it may not qualify as a total reboot, it certainly is a whitewash. Compare the history and "Living in the modern world" sections from SR1 to SR4. SR1 focused heavily on the political and social changes that happened, with a lot of emphasis on the Great Ghost Dance war and racial/political tension. SR4 focused heavily on the wireless matrix. A great deal of important material from the original setting was ignored/swept under the rug in order to make room for the new matrix.

The time gap itself isn't a problem, although considering how many radical changes they shoved into that five-year gap, it does stretch credulity. It's taken twenty years for cellphones to catch on, and I still know a lot of people who don't have them. I also know people who still use dial-up. It's asking us to swallow an awful lot of changes in a short period of time; and that's just on the technological level. The new global culture was designed to fit around the matrix, not the other way around. I mean, in five years, we go from Bright Lights/Deep Shadows to a Bluetooth version of 1984. It's impossible to operate as a shadowrunner if you follow the fluff as written. Also, shadowslang almost got the big heave ho; in five years, we see the slang not only almost totally replaced, but switched with an identical copy of 1990's idiom. What we're seeing is actually a regression in vision; instead of an iconic future, we're presented with a souped-up present.

As far as deckers go, you could always get the decker to come along with the team, just by putting the paydata in offline storage. That was hardly a SR4 innovation. What SR4 tried to do was give the decker more options in combat, by allowing wireless hacking of an opponent's gear. However, in practice, that sort of thing doesn't really work out as advertised. You're generally better off just shooting them than messing with their gear.

And the decker dominance problem still remains: when the time comes for legwork, the decker takes over the game, and everyone else goes out for pizza. Most of the information you need is on the matrix, so logically the best person to get the intel is the person with the best Data Search skill and Browse program. Since you can't default to an attribute in the matrix, you need both program and skill in order to have any dice to roll. In theory, you could spend edge; but for one, that seems like a waste. And two, a Data Search roll is an extended test, and you can only make as many Extended test rolls as you have ranks in the skill. So, with a skill of 0, you can't really make any rolls at all towards the Extended test.

In an average game, you're going to be making about as many data search rolls are you will be perception rolls. You start by gathering general intel on your target, double-checking the info Johnson gives you, and checking the backgrounds on everyone involved. All this is best handled by Matrix searches; all other characters might have to offer right now are contacts, who may or may not be the right type to offer you information on your job. After you've you've got your basic intel, you start forming a plan, and go after detailed data on specific items. Once again, this is best done via Data Search rolls on the matrix. You also start hunting down specialized pieces of gear you might need. Depending on what that gear is, contacts may be useful; but if you're after things like janitorial uniforms and equipment, you're probably better off on the matrix. Finally, you start piecing the plan together. Now the other players can rejoin the game: it's time for astral recons, meeting people, and gathering the stuff you need. This is pretty much what happened in every SR4 Missions game I encountered, as well as one of my trips through On The Run.


Agreed. If you look at SR1-3 you'll notice that the shamanic and hermetic traditions got about a page and a half of fluff each. That served as an introduction to what the tradition was all about. In SR4, each one gets about a paragraph. A lot of flavor text was removed, in order to make way for the new unified magic system. That's not to say that the unified magic system isn't a basically good idea (I actually like the way it works) but they did sacrifice flavor in the process.


I totally agree with all your points except one. My hate of the Maneuver Score knows no limits; the new system is indeed better than that. It still doesn't work very well, though. If you'll notice, there are actually *two* different set of Vehicle combat rules. They're mutually incompatible, neither of them do a good job of running combat between more than two vehicles, and neither of them do well at mixed pedestrian/vehicle combat. To top it off, there's a third set of vehicle rules in the rigger section, which doesn't belong with either of them. However, on the balance of things, it's still simpler than the Maneuver Score.


System Failure, like some other 3rd ed books, was conceived of after SR4 was greenlighted. There were several SR3 books which were released post-SR4; additionally, this was about the time that Shadows of Latin America was almost finished. As already stated, System Failure was basically a Gehenna book for SR3, designed to clear the slate and make way for SR4.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: SR4 was designed around shiny new toys, and the rest of the world (and some of the rules) were squished around them to fit. You want evidence, look at technomancers. Their sudden appearance makes no sense (they just come out of the blue, developing wireless magic after being exposed to a wired matrix), their plot points are a mess, and their rules don't work. They started off as an underpowered mess; to fix this, they were given absurdly powerful Echos that don't always work out right (or so I'm told, I haven't read Unwired yet). And even then, considering that they're karma sinks, I still don't see any evidence that they;ll be balanced against well-optimized characters with equivalent karma. They were a work-around, added without much thought, and it shows.

Edit: Posted as I was posting:

SR4 is not that much simpler than SR1-3. To give credit where credit is due, SR4 shows a significant improvement in layout and presentation over previous editions. It's not that the rules are simpler, it's that the presentation is much, much better. That is one place where I applaud the SR4 developers.

As far as dated technological and sociological references, would the same thing happen if you brought a Star Wars game to a set of newbies? What about Star Trek, or Buck Rogers? There's many futuristic settings that don't match up with modern technology and sociology-- that's not a problem, that's part of their charm, and part of why they're so popular. As another example, Traveller just had another major release; that system is based on late 1970's futurism, and still does well.

The majority of who or what?

If you go with a majority of current players, well that is an always shifting dynamic. If Fanpro had listened to the majority of players at 4th ed. launch or a few months there after the answer would have been to can their 4th edition and go back to the drawing board. But a lot of old faces (including myself) left the boards when we realized it was a losing fight and Fanpro was entirely just tuning us out and didn't care what any critic whether playtester, player, or reviewer had to say so long as they were still in business (which they no longer are for SR).

Now Catalyst is in charge and they do listen very much, but attrition of old players and growth of new players means that we're no longer the majority on these boards or in the active SR community. If they went back to producing 3rd edition (which they shouldn't) it would flip flop back around again due to attrition and growth.

I've also seen other game developers cater to giving what a "majority" of their players wanted, continously driving away minority groups until their playerbase diminished to where the company closed down.

My experience says never to chase after the theoretical "great customer base" by throwing away what you have now. Fanpro did it with 4th edition to a large extent and seems to have gotten lucky, but most companies aren't. Likewise Catalyst shouldn't do it to appease prior Shadowrun players, because who knows how many are willing to come back?

I believe in growing your player base and expanding it, not replacing it. Keep as many of your current customers as possible while reaching out to different customer groups and doing things to appease them without scaring off current customers. I think bringing back some of the older popular plots and playing down some of the more overly drastic changes would be a good idea.

I suppose so as reboot in a literary/story telling sense implies that something has been either erased or seriously changed and started over. A la Batman Begins is a reboot of the Batman franchise, not a continuation of the previous films.

In the interest of you and I being on the same page. What would you call it when you throw a catastrophe into a story in order to remove plotlines that have been building for awhile. This would be the equivalent in alternate earth fiction of in the middle of WW2 after the US is already there, dropping some A bombs everywhere killing off your main characters and plots so that way you can start with a fresh WW2 after the bomb plot line with Germany and Russia rebuilding and getting ready for a new attack. The US meanwhile having to build new ships to cross over. Because that is how I see the changes to Shadowrun (the first bomb being Big D)

Again I'm not saying its a bad thing its just what they did do.

I'd call that a retcon not a reboot. maybe it's just the comic book thing.

Looking back at 1st edition, i could say the same.

It is only the 20 years difference that make the souped-up present of 1989 seem iconic (catchy phrase, BTW, thanks for that).
On the reverse, Orks on facebook, mangaesque character options and fundamentalist muslim physads can only be iconic 20 years from now.
Iconicity needs retrospect.


There's nothing wrong with that iconic late80s/early 90s vibe, either.
But...i already have a shelf full of 1st/2nd edition books with that setting.
I can get back to the kind of Neuromancer/Tron/Max Headroom matrix anytime i want and even make believe that sculpted systems and UV hosts are the latest fad and otaku babbling about ghosts in the machine are the mysterious new matrix phenomenon.
Go visit the Chicago Containment Zone and slug it out with the bugs*.
Or run the streets of Berlin before the corps took over.
Meet Hatchetman talking to the images his IMS evokes.
Sneak into Tir na nOg.
Get grossed out by Thomas Roxborough.
Take a look at London's broken down weather control system while cockney hools shoot at me with demi-tech.
Good times.

However, i don't have to spend money on a new edition for that.
I can already do that, either with the old rules or with SR4.


________________________________________________________________________
*I sifted through Bug City two weeks ago and when i reached the rules section, the first thing i realized was how lame the old bug spirits where statwise- cannon fodder with one or two powers mostly, not nearly as fun and versatile as the bug spirits of SR4, even though they had two or three writeups for each kind of bug instead of 5 for all of them.
They all seemed almost the same.

The fluff was awesome, though.
There was an intensity to the writing that i have sorely missed since the end of 2e.
3e had lost the fervor and intensity of the early years and it's coming back oh so slowly.
Gotta play Bug City with SR4 rules someday, it would certainly be a blast.

Hell yes. Picked Bug City up this weekend at Gencon (and I'd say it's my favorite purchase, but then I lucked into Monsterpocalypse starters) and I was just jazzed at everything I've read. I've gone over it cover to cover three times since, and it just amazes me how much passion and flavor were laced into every word of the fluff.

I've been thinking of starting a topic on here asking for suggestions for running the '50s with the SR4th rule set. My plan is to write a sort of trilogy with "Missing Blood" as the first chapter and then looping a little ahead into Bug City, then finishing up here in Boston in the '70s using the detective character from MB as the strand tying them all together for a convention game. First I've got to run it past my players though...*grin*

Bug City is still my favourite SR sourcebook as far as the fluff is concerned.
One could write up a campaign there that lasted years, in- as well as outgame.

We'll see what is left of that once Feral Cities comes out.
I don't wanna sound too pessimistic, i think there is indeed a need to keep the setting moving (and it isn't that much of an effort to change the timeline a bit, moving the whole bug events a decade and a half into the future), but i doubt that a sequel will be able to keep up to the old material's power.
It's damn convincing as far as atmosphere is concerned, one sees that rarely in RPG products.

Adapting it to the new bug rules would be really worth it, i've thought about that, too.
Fitting it into the new magic system wouldn't be that hard, in spite of some minor discrepancies in the description of what happened in Chicago's astral space (and besides that, there would be not that much work to do- overhauling the availability table, putting some thought into NPC stats and matrx stuff, there you go).
Would make the whole place a whole lot deadlier, though.

As i said, the old flesh forms (now hybrid forms) used to be decrepit cannon fodder.
They where actually worse than the original host.
No fancy spirit immunities for them, decreased physical stats, poorer mental stats than today's model, much less powers.
Nowadays, they can be downright scary with a proper host- a troll with a high-level spirit inhabiting him is nightmarish, especially given the fact that the merging now allows inhabiting spirits to make full use of non-AR cyberware.


With dwindling APDS supplies and the possible repercussions of conjuring, combined with expected high background count, the new bugs make for one tough place to visit, now more so than ever.



To get back on topic, the quality of the old material had nothing to do with the points that are adressed here.
They made the same mistakes back then- rushed the metaplot forward, making the horrors arrive ridiculously early (yeah, sure, spike point...the dumbest "it's magic!" explanation ever), in spite of the fact that they came up at that time with the whole scourge thing and easily could have arranged events otherwise, simply by avoiding to bring up their own invention of the magical bell curve, using a different model instead (and another model would have fit so muchg more better anyway).

They brought up developments that make the current situation in TT look reasonable, like the whole NAN thing to begin with.

But this changed nothing about the fact that the setting really got you, really made you read the old sourcebooks' fluff over and over again.

It was a matter of writing style and intensity of the ideas involved.

I see that in some of today's products as well, even in the crunch books, which include some excellent fluff.
Cyberzombies and jarheads, for example (and toxics are more interesting than ever), but something about the writing isn't as strong as it used to be, at least yet.
There's something missing, i can't quite say what it is, but there was a certain...spark, a passion in books like Bug City that hooked me on SR permanently.

I totally agree. I read the first Virtual Realities cover to cover, even though the decker was so unplayable at the time I did what everyone did, NPCed the hack.

Me too, except for that we actually had a player in our group who ocassionally played a hacker and, after VR2 came out, switched to an otaku who was too weak to carry his own armor jacket .

I don't know what the technical term is for it. Forcing a resolution or climax to the story, I would suppose. Fiction is filled with examples of slowly rising then quickly burning down plots.

When you apply retroactive continuity you're changing the facts of a previously established setting or plot with new information that was previously unknown (ie: Uncle Ben was actually shot by The Sandman and not the nameless robber as we were told in the first movie). A reboot (to me) is when you start the whole thing all over again from scratch, keeping only the core concepts (ie: Batman Begins, the recent Incredible Hulk movie, etc. which only had character and conceptual ties to their predecessors and were not considered sequels).

If System Failure wasn't "Anti-Climactic" I'm not sure quite what would fit the definition.



I don't care if you say Retcon, Reboot, or "Game Over. Would you like to Restart?"

The Matrix is gone. Every Shadowtalk commentator you know except Fastjack is probably dead. Magic has imploded. Countries you know are either "Severely bruised" or "Radically changed". Many years have passed.

The only way to make it really more different is to throw out all the history like FASA interactive did.

So yes I do continue to use my old setting books and don't buy the new books because I don't like the story rewrite, Technomancers, rarity balancing, homogenized magic, the lack of Shadowslang, or "everything is hackable". I've yet to see even the people who are playing 4th edition make a strong defense of why most of those are supposed to be actual improvements.

Storywise like Magic not working on the Matrix? or are you talking more like what is established in game mechanics like Mages and Shamans are fundamentally different and unable to communicate with the same groups of spirits?

I felt the same about the original VR book. The whole matrix-born story was just really enjoyable to read. Still drop back to reread it now and again.

No I can't - largely because I don't feel the need to spend a couple hours on research in order to have it disregarded (ala the point of "half the megas being destroyed") in the next post. The fact of the matter is while System Failure may have established that (again, I lack motivation atm to check) we simply do not know what the actual continuity is for the vast majority of the world at this moment. It strikes me as a huge presumption to assume it is a complete wiped based on so little information.

Please understand, I'm not trying to start a fight or be an ass here(it's difficult I admit). I truly don't understand where you and some others are getting the concept that it was a total retcon/reboot and would like to know what precisely you base this assumption on.



SR4 material specificially states (implied in the BBB, directly in Unwired) that the actual backbone of the Matrix is still wired - backbone meaning the RTGs and the like. It is largely only end user access that is wireless to my understanding.



I agree, this development sucks hoop. Me, I like my traditional shadowslang - frag, drek, hoop, slot, etc. Personally, I view this as a regrettable minor point and hand wave it as a passing retro-fad. Hopefully the designers will do the same, but I'm not holding my breath. The same goes for the "cyber is last year" thing.



Every Grimoire (and MitS) had advancements in magical theory. Why do you have such a problem with this one?



I was trying to state my understanding so you could supply what you thought was missing in addition to that - essentially making it easier for you to answer.

As stated we don't know what the IEs are up to - that doesn't mean they are gone. Further, I don't see dragons as so prevalent as to be a replacement. Could you point out to me where this is stated? Further, the major government overthrow plotline is logically still in play - do you really think the New Revolution planned to stop at taking the UCAS? As for overthrown corps, I've already covered that.



As Tiger Eyes noted, we have yet to see any books about those areas.



Please do - I'm dumb remember? I guess it comes from needing to see proof before I accept random assertions (some of which I know are false) as truth. I'll disregard your last statement of that paragraph for the moment.



You however are trying to make it out like they did destroy the entire world, and that's what I don't understand. The Matrix /= the entire world, yet you seem to have latched onto that like the proverbial sacred cow. I've already covered the magic rules.



Faster, smoother flowing combat mainly (barring vehicle interactions). Real Matrix runs are in fact much easier than any previous edition, though I agree on the fear factor if you use the RAW. Those and the streamlining of the magic system are the major improvements. As to character creation, the build point system have always been a pain but they are preferable to the stifling minimalism of the old priority systems.



Is this then the core of the objection? Familiarity with the old system and refusal to change because of the hassle (and cost) of it? I don't mean offense by this - I'm trying to understand you.



Where does it state this can be done for a non-smartlinked weapon?



As am I, however if they simply reboot the setting so the 4th edition continuity never existed (or 3rd, or 2nd for that matter), or change the mechanics in such a way so as to make the majority of 4th edition useless so soon after the release of the full compliment of core books, I for one would be rather pissed and do the same as you and others - refuse to buy/upgrade. The question then is how can your desires for development be reconciled with mine (basically representing the two factions here) in such as way that be are both satisfied if not happy?



I don't believe the new direction (if you want to call it that) is static from all indications - it seems to me they intend to go places with the setting and metaplot. Where I don't know. I would prefer that some way could be found to please those of you who dislike 4th edition (which I'm not in the least bit sure can be called the majority of SR fans) so you too can enjoy a living game. Contrary to appearances I dislike fighting with fellow "old timers" that have a long standing love of the game, precisely because we have so much of a shared world in the previous editions. However, as noted above I'm not sure how that could be achieved in a fashion I could accept.

I've already done so with my namesake character and a number of others, as well as the weapons from Cannon Companion (previous to the release of Arsenal - Knasser was hosting the document) and several long standing house rules and metamagics we use. It's really not that difficult, much less a major overhaul.

With all due respect to you and Bull, I disagree. The changes from 3rd to 4th are no greater than those from 1st to 2nd in most places.



If it was so impossible why then did they publish a conversion guide (that made the matter rather simple).



That's rather tame really. I've had people threaten my life and "want my blood" over online discussions in the past.



IIRC the Ghost Dance war ended in 2019. If you were writing a roleplaying game set in 2000, would you go into excessive detail about WWII if it wasn't immediately relevant to the current setting, or would you just gloss it over and say "WWII happened"? Because that's the same time differential as you are talking about between 2019 and 2070.



Agreed.



Each tradition gets about a half page now - enough to cover the main points.



Agreed - technos suck. This is not a point of contention.

As ironic as it sounds, the term that best describes what they did is Deus Ex Machnia. Literally "god in the machine", it was a term used in Greek plays where everything would go into a catastrophic mess, so the gods would have to come down and fix things. They used a pulley system to produce special effects for the gods; thus the term "god in the machine" sprang into being. Nowadays, it's used to describe a literary contrivance that simply comes down and fixes everything for you.

Basically, we're handed a global crisis that miraculously involves a significant number of the major powers in Shadowrun, each of which has a secret plot to cause multiple major catastrophies at exactly the same time. We have our heroic downhill battle, total chaos, then Bam! The dust clears, five years later, and we have a shiny new world running perfectly.

It's been three years since Katrina, and we're still rebuilding a lot of New Orleans. It's been seven years since 9/11, and they still haven't done anything with the site of the WTC. It took decades to recover from the Depression; and also, in Shadowrun history, it took decades to fully recover from the original Crash. Compared to the complete FUBAR the world undergoes in System Failure, we can see that everything just got fixed with a wave of a wand. I mean, we've got a massive economic crisis, failure of most major computers on the planet, nukes going off, Megacoprporations and governments crashing, and just about everything possible going haywire. And presto, five years later, everything is basically done and over with.

I could go on and on. Basically, not only did a bundle of good plotlines die a horrible and contrived death, everything was fixed within five years, to the point where everyone goes about everything normally. Suddenly, every sleazy bar and mom-and-pop convenience store is equipped with AR technology, designed to interface with systems that were also quickly developed, and managed to get into the hands of everyone with a SIN.

I don't care if you call it a reboot, rewrite, retcon, or whatever else. The fact is, the Shadowrun world was not only dramatically changed overnight, it was all done in a very contrived manner.

As far as the writing goes, I've written a couple of reviews on SR4 products that are posted here, on Rpg.net. Catalyst does have some talented people working for them; in particular, I think Demonseed Elite's treatment of Hong Kong is absolutely brilliant. However, there's also a lot of problems and mixed-bag writing floating around out there. In particular, the Seattle section was written by committee, which apparently didn't talk very well with each other. Some parts of Seattle were pretty neat (I love the name for the arcology, the ACHE), but a lot of it is bland pap designed to be as generic as possible. I don't know if I should blame poor writing or poor direction for that.

Dragons got a serious boost in power with 4th addition. Even a non-Great basic Dragon has rather incredible power, the kind that says... you're not really supposed to ever fight these (rather than it just being a really, really tough fight like it was before).

Do I think the New Revolution planned to stop at taking over the UCAS? Absolutely not, but then it is a stretch to say that the "good ol' boys" were so good at it they were able to really mess up the Tir and NANs (per System Failure). As for the IEs, lets keep that to the Tir thread because that horse has already been beaten about why it is ridiculous.



But we still have some material on them mentioned, and what has been done so far is very... disappointing and not really in keeping with the continuity of previous plotlines.



How much do you want? Major chunks of previous SR sourcebooks are now invalidated by quickly glossing over the changes that have happened. I will try to do my best to give you what you think you need if you're serious about it.



It wasn't a quite a Cataclysmic "And the Moon struck the Earth", but it definitely was there intention to upheave the interior system setting and mechanics. Rob Boyle even admitted as much shortly after 4.0 release.



I've played 4th edition and I've not seen combat flow any smoother than before. Real Matrix runs seemed a lot more complicated in fact mechanically, with far less challenge. Simply a lot more dice rolling to achieve the same thing was what it seemed like. Magic streamlining was good, but taken too far for the flavor and fluff of what is Shadowrun. Build points for 3rd were simple and I could whip up complete characters in 20 minutes and have time to start writing backstories. Even veteran 4th edition players have had trouble putting together basic characters for 4th edition for me, and the back and forth, back and forth to create the character is silly. There have been improvements, but not enough to warrant a new edition IMO.



Familiarity of the old system has to be weighed against improvements in the new. The problem is 4th edition simply is not an improvement to me. Mechanically it is a wash and to even begin to play it means setting up about as many home rules as I already have for 3rd edition to get it to work just as well as 3rd already does for me. So I should drop about $200 for core rule books, ignore the fluff, for a system that is no better and will have to be home ruled just as much? That isn't a sale to me and I expect a lot more to warrant a new edition.


Gangers don't use Smart-goggles? It doesn't matter either way, it is silly that even the dumbest thug would trade in his weapon for something that can be easily disabled. Street knowledge of this disabling, especially since every runner is doing it would create a hot, hot market for "low-tech" weapons that don't feel the need to use wireless to connect from gun to skin/cable.



Yes, this is where the discussion needs to go. This is especially the conversation we need to have with Catalyst. As I've stated before, I don't think they should treat their new players the way old fans of the franchise were treated. By treating I mean proceed on a course of development that upsets a large and significant part of their customer/fan base.



I don't mean the actual world is static. Static was a bad word choice. Probably "stubborn" or "dogged" determination to stick to this new course no matter how unpopular it is with so many fans.

I've got a lot of ideas of how it could be fixed, but it would require two things we've not seen so far.

#1 for the developers to acknowledge the disgruntled SR3 fan base.
#2 for the developers to be acknowledge issues and be willing to fix them.
#3 for fans of 4th edition and 3rd edition to find common ground that Catalyst can proceed with to expand their customer base

Shadowrun has been one of my pasttimes for soon to be 20 years. I didn't stop loving it, but the development of 4th edition has utterly disregarded what many of us loved about the game.

But it is relevant. NANs are 2/3 if not 3/4 of the North American map. All of Mexico, have the U.S., and most of Canada are a NAN.

Part of the awesome flavor of 1st edition wasn't that the Fantasy elements were just all made up like the current fad of "Urban Fantasy" novels. A major difference between Shadowrun and them is that Shadowrun fantasy is High Fantasy and based in large part off of real historical traditional beliefs about Magic from different cultures. Shadowrun didn't have to invent fantasy cultures for North America or Elves because it could borrow them from Native American folklore and Gaelic folklore.

Now I think it is fine that not everybody is into that, and some prefer more sword & sorcery fantasy like Earthdawn. But the nice thing about Shadowrun was that both were supported and the GM could pick and choose between his influences.

Plus the NANs and Elven nations are a couple of my favorite settings because it is fun to play in familiar locations for my players with such different context to them than they're used to.

Sorry for the late response, I'm a slow poster.

Have you actually *tried* the conversion guide? It doesn't work. I tried converting a few characters from SR3 Missions to 4e, and they all blew chunks. In some cases, they ended up worse than a SR4 starting character with no karma. If your character had tons of karma under his belt, he might escaped with just a serious crippling; but if you were converting a newer character, everything would suddenly suck. For example, one character, a human mage, ended up with a converted Edge of 1. That's not even *possible* for starting humans in SR4.


The pint is, the focus of the history has shifted dramatically, and some events can cause massive reverberations for many years to come. The Great Ghost Dance is one of them. Ask anyone over a certain age: "Where were you when JFK was shot?" and you'll have a surprising answer. Some things remain firmly planted in our minds, and many of those were glossed over in SR4.


Come on, they had multiple doomsday plots go off at the same time. The matrix is just the easiest target. It goes without saying that many major, long-running plotlines and characters were simply swept to the side, in order to have a world with a wireless matrix.


I still see combat taking roughly as long as it did in previous editions, so I wouldn't call it faster. Then again, I was playing a lot of Savage Worlds a while ago, and that system made most other RPG combat seem like a slug with arthritis. BP systems existed under both SR2 and 3; the difference was, neither was a fiddly and overly-complex as what we get in Sr4. As far as the priority system goes, I never once felt stifled or constrained by it. Originally, Shadowrun Missions for 3e required the use of th priority systems; I certainly never encountered two identical characters.


All items have a default Device Rating. That includes guns. Since they have a Device rating, they also have matrix ratings, and can therefore be attacked via the matrix.

The issue with guns (or anything else) being hacked is rather silly. Any professional would have the wireless flat out removed on his weapons right away. Fiber optic cable sewn into the sleeve of your armor/jacket/shirt is a *far* safer way to go. Hell, even sticking with the old ware idea, and making it a skinlink would work.

Yes, the stock, default configuration comes prepared for wireless hookups. Doesn't mean you can't disable them.

I was of the understanding that they took the UCAS and maybe managed a couple of assassinations in the NANs. What I meant is that I expect to see further plot developement on this one.

No prob regarding the Tir.



I am serious, but I must admit I'm not sure if either of us will be able to change the other's mind truthfully. So I'll leave it to your discretion ok? I don't want to waste your time and effort but at the same time would like to see what you mean precisely (especially if it means I'm missing things that need fixing or explanation).



I think this boils down to a YMMV thing. It's significantly faster combat for us, and bp character creation takes us about a half hour in either system (for me and my veteren player).



Understandable - I feel the same of D&D 4th.



Most gangers in my world don't. As for runners, skinlink is all but mandatory IMO.



The problem is they can't exactly unwrite what they've already published without pissing off the other half (ish) of the fanbase. They are in essence between the proverbial rock and the hard place.



No prob.



I would seriously love to hear them - a new thread perhaps?

Regarding your requirements (which I agree on), I can't speak for the devs or anyone else, but as I think you can see I am willing to try to find some common ground here. We do it fact share a few gripes after all



Agreed, I'm just not sure it needs more explanation than what 4th gave - at least in a basic overview. I fully expect a SoNA equivalent down the line (hint hint devs )



I agree - I love the NANs (Souix Nation rules - what can I say, I'm something of a pinkskin at heart), and the Tir as is was cool if not that runner friendly (my namesake character is from the Tir). SoNA was one of my favorite 3rd edition books. So I know where you're coming from on this point.

No prob - I type slower than turtle speed myself



Agreed, it doesn't work as is - it requires some slight tweaks to be made appropriate. Now admitted my namesake character has been run on and off since 1st edition and has like 800 karma in 3rd edition terms (translates out to roughly 600 in 4th), so he got off easy so to speak. The others were about 100 karma ish, and came out ok but not wow. The point thought is that conversion can be done, with relative ease (though admittedly rebuilding is sometimes preferable), so it's not truly a completely different engine.



Agreed. Like I told Not of This World above, I expect to see such covered in future supplements. I guess the main difference here is that I'm willing to adopt a wait and see attitude.



The same could be said of the Dragonheart trilogy and the horrors.



All items, or all items that are computerized? Myself I don't view the average sword or non-smartlinked gun (or brick, or piece of garbage, or normal clothes, or whatever) to be computerized, thus I don't view it as an issue. Essentially I take to heart the phrase "The gamemaster has final determination over what items are wireless-enabled." and apply common sense in favor of nonsense like "Even non-electronic devices without moving parts may have a built-in computer, if it might be useful or convenient to the user (wouldn’t you like to be able to download and play your favorite songs on your jacket?)." Perhaps that is not 4th edition as it is intended, but I never stated 4th was flawless.

Further, even if a non-smartlinked gun is wireless enabled, I see no reason why it's compterized components should be able to effect the actual operation of the weapon.

the impression im left with after some threads like these are that some play very close to canon, and will not go close to any dangling plot thread for fear of having their in-game story be contradicted by the in-book story...

YMMV to the Nth...

I was almost ready to cede this point to you, except after sleeping on it and seeing you write it again, I now see the issues.
1) Business must go on. Those aspects hindering business get the most attention.
Example: New Orleans is still rebuilding, but the ability to do business has been rebuilt. In sr, Barrens are still very lacking in wireless, but commercial areas are very built up. Wireless is everywhere, but its mixed with the wired.
2) The towers (or a monument) may not be rebuilt but the stock exchange and business thrive in New York. Business must go on.
3) Iraq was bombed into the stone age. The country is far from rebuilt but cell phones and oil pipelines are getting primary attention. Business must go on.

I think your evaluation lacks the proper RL perspective. Any aspect or infrastructure required to to business will get immediate attention. The wireless infrastructure is one such aspect.

Ditto. The assertion that just because something is wireless that you can come across the matrix and attack is silly. Everything wireless has a signal rating to connect to a PAN, not everything is connected to the matrix directly. Now, hacking a com that has a smartgun connected to it is another story.

To add to this, the other key to remember here is that in RL, a lot of this stuff relies on the government to help it along, and that's slow and takes a lot of time. Business and corporations, on the other hand, can and move a lot quicker.

And in Shadowrun, with the megacorps, when they move, they MOVE. A couple of corps got together, decided wireless was the way to go, and then implemented it. The Corps then turned around and basically told the population that "Ok, everythings wireless now", and with some marketing spin, the people just accepted it. And why not? After all, it's cheaper than what they had before, readily available, and makes their lives easier.

I think that a lot of peoploe when they compare what happened in SR to Real Life forget the one big difference between the two... Megacorporations. They're more powerful than governments, and basically dictate how the average person in the SR world lives, even the ones that don;t work directly for them.

Bull

If that isn't a Deus ex Machina I don't know what you think would qualify....

If this is in response to my bit about the Megacorps, why do you say that?

Hell, this happens now, and we don;t even have anything as large as a Mega. Corps and companies tell us what to wear, what to eat, who's popular, what to watch... We get a little bit of say now, by what we do and don't purchase, but at the end of the day, the masses will consume whatever they're told, if the company responsible pumps enough advertising dollar behind it.

It often doesn't work though.

But more importantly my point has more to do with plot use than real world use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

Rather than a credible plot line over time, the transition between 3rd and 4th is so messed up you have to have super organizations come in, wave their magic wand, and say "it just is".

People can argue over words of whether it is rebooting, retconning, Deus Ex Machina, restart, whatever. Point is you're making a good case that SR was intentionally just wiped and Megacorps are the 'Deus Ex Machina' invoked as a magic explanation invoked for a lack of continuity in setting up the new edition.

Okay, well I'll start with one. The Boston setting.

Covered in Target: UCAS, Corporate Downloads, Corporate Punishment, etc.

Well 4th edition has destroyed Novatech, detonated a huge bomb in the city, killed off several of the most important NPCs to the setting, and left it so that most of the others are probably dead. Now my wife is from Boston, loved playing it as a setting. If you enjoyed the previous setting and want something similar and close, but want to play the current canonical edition how do you do it?

Those sourcebooks for Boston are mostly invalidated by 4th edition changes and pulling any of her old GM's plots forward would be quite a stretch.

One of my players was a drone Rigger (already using wireless in 3rd edition) and heavily involved with some Otaku plotlines... can't carry those on in 4th edition. Don't get me started on converting Otaku to Technomancers, mechanically they might be similar but fluff wise they're night and day.

So there are a couple ways if we stayed with 4th edition material it would massively change our game. 3rd edition isn't just hard to convert to 4th stat wise, it can be near impossible to convert your character stories to 4th edition and continue on the same plots sometimes.



One they put themselves in it should be added. I do believe it can be done, I just expect the playerbase will really have to dwindle as it did in Shadowrun 2nd edition. When they saw things were doing really poorly they got rid of or toned down a lot of things people hated that they were wasting so much development time on (i.e. Leonardo, Horrors).



Well I'm very serious about it too. So can we put together our common complaints about 4th edition and start from there? See if we can create solutions that are generally appealing to both new and old communities.

* NAN treatment
* Tir treatment
* Technomancers
* Character creation
* Shadowslang
* Too much Wi-Fi
* better Vehicle integration

Please add or subtract from this list as you see fit.



Making these settings more prominent, and retaining their unique characters plus returning to the old Shadowslang would at least make me interested in 4th edition sourcebooks again even if not the ruleset.

I simply retconned the wireless as "was always like that", and play in a mid-50s setting with sr4 rules. Works very well. Any other differences can easily be integrated - it really doesn't matter much what corp one is tangling with, Fuchi, Novatech, NeoNet.

Hm, this is where Boston is covered? Good. I was looking for information for my own work on Boston.



Let me ask you how, say, people who played their campaigns in Chicago felt after Bug City? Or LA, Denver or the Phillipines after Year of the Comet? Hell, Seattle's even had some serious plot tossed at it in-between books. These are all 2nd and 3rd edition books...

Oh, and from one Bostonite to another, howdy to your wife

Good point: People complain if changes come with a new edition, but as long as entire megacorps/cities/countries get nuked within an edition, it's all a-ok?

Sorry, wrong. See the mess they made of the arcology. Here\'s an overview of the plotline centering around the arc:

R:AS - Something bad happened in the arc. Raku says it\'s Terrorists, but noone believes it.
Brainscan - an evil AI took over the Arc, but now the Army is there to save the day. Move over, corp boys, and watch us win.
SotA63/64 - The Arc\'s a brilliant setting for the mroe extreme reality shows, and the occasional drone shredding a candidate adds nicely to ratings.
SF/BBB 4.0 - Deus came back again, but was blasted, ebven if he took the Matrix with him. The Arc events are a major trauma for Seattlites.
RH - The Arc matter still stirs up people, and there\'s a memorial for that planned, but somehow, people don\'t mind living in the arc, and noone wants to redevelop the grounds it\'s standing on.
Arsenal - The arc disaster made people distrust anythiing Raku produced that somehow had it\'s own decision-making mechanism, and Raku worked hard to make a comeback in household drone market. In other news, arcology drone rip-offs are selling well.
Emergence - Noone knew of Deus, the Arc history, it\'s all actually been secret all along! Hence, everybody loves AIs, when Horizon mediablitzes them.
Unwired - AIs are recognised as nice fellow sentients, never mind the first three together offed the population of a medium-sized nation state. Because they have fluffy icons. The Arc? What Arc?

Find the discontinuity.


The WiFi hyped second Matrix (sorry, but this \'giving everything this computer program feel\' thing feels old to me, it died with the new economy) did what exactly to change that? UV hosts still are the latest fad, Technomancers still babble about ghosts in the Matrix, and VR sculpting is more common than ever (you have, if playing by Unwired rules, design sculpted systems for *every piece of equipment you own* and assign IC and other defensive programs to it!) ... where\'s the change for the better? Also, the \"everything\'s wireless! WIFI FTW!\" fad gets truely ridiculous when it is extended to vehicle engines, like in Unwired. I\'m sure everyone would want their car to shut down in case a thunderstorm moved by.

Not to even mention that, by all reason, the SR 4 cities should be bopmbarded with Thunderbirds (the critter), who are said to attack any kind of radio communication with great vigor, emit EMP, and explode upon death. But apparently, they, for some reason, mysteriously vanished off the face of the earth.


Well, 4 out of 5 is close enough, isn\'t it? And yes, neither NeoNet nor Evo have anything in common with their supposed parent corps. Cross is totally gone, and Horizon just teleported into the world out of nowhere.


Well. BBB says that, yes ... but Unwired? That book even specifies that the Matrix\' backbones are wireless too, and even gives stats for a wireless backbone server.


If you were writing a present day RPG in any part of Europe, doing that wopuld make the setting very much unbelievable. Because WW2\'s aftershocks still are a strong factor in how people as well as nations here interact.

Few peoples, like Americans, may live sufficiently far away from the rest of the world to ignore history like that. You may really be able to brush over history that way (though, what about the Civil War? Is it over with, including the repercussions regarding race? hunh?) in such a setting. But in everything else, history can\'t just be ignored.


QFT

It is a valid point, but there are a lot of differences in how it was handled. First of all "Year of the Comet" didn't have a lot of apocalyptic events that demolished cities, mass number of fatalities, etc. You could play with cults, or just assume you didn't bump heads with them. Unless you SURGE'd, most things went back to normal afterwards and it was just a bunch of events. Even if you were set in the Yucatan, one of the most destructive settings... the war next explicitly come to your next of the woods and it could just be ominous news events from next door if you wanted to GM in the canon setting that way.

Now bug city was very destructive and unavoidable. It was also pretty well hinted at in multiple sourcebooks and novels in advance. If you were following the canon setting prior to Bug City, it was already full of bugs. The Cermak blast brought them to the surface and created open warfare and walls as an after result containment. I'd also note that the destruction of the Bugs reversed that direction and brought things basically back to the way it was before. (Now just do that with System Failure and we'll be happy, kk? ) Plus on top of that Bug city is still a setting and event book that adds a lot to the Shadowrun setting. Both Bug city and Arcology Shutdown are mini localized environments that are contained, and life outside the Arcology in Seattle or outside the Chicago containment zone in the rest of Chicago continues on with your old plot hooks.

System Failure is just the opposite. It is an "Apocalypse" book designed to take away from the setting. You've got 9 Cermak blasts going off around the globe. You've got the essentially utter destruction (oh yeah it exists afterwards, but nothing exists like you knew it) of the Matrix which could be described as almost a third of the Shadowrun setting (Physical, Magical, Matrix) in some ways. You've got the assassination of unknown numbers of world leaders (remember the book tells us the description of UCAS is only the begging and worse things supposedly happened in countires as of yet undetailed... plans to do more damage to the setting in the future?). You've got the deaths and elimination of most of the Shadowtalk personalities you knew and loved. The whole premise behind System Failure is that the Shadowrun world you knew and loved is over and it is not meant that for you to continue having Shadowrun the way you knew it whether you like it or not.

So if you really liked the setting of SR3, System Failure and SR4 turned that on you and basically says we're going to have that any more.

Why is there any surprise that a large number of players then choose not to like SR4 and either to not play it or play it with reluctance?

One of the first and I think very necessary things to get SR3 fans into SR4 is to play down the events of System Failure and make them catalysts of change, rather than forcing the end of things as they were. They should have simply moved forward like SR2 and SR3 did without slamming a door on the past.

all i see are the classical media sheeps doing the approved happy dance...

Okay, just for fun (and because the coffee cake has another 30 minutes to bake) I ran thru the current posters on Jackpoint and looked them up in pre-SR4 books I have on PDF.

Some are bigger names than others: Slamm-0!, Kane (most wanted man in 17 countries), Pyramid Watcher, Man of Many Names, Smiling Bandit, Puck (just a minor plot character, really ), and Frosty (Jane Foster... remember her?)

Others:

Aufheben (Loose Alliances)
Cosmo (Underworld, Portfolio of a Dragon, SoTA64)
Ecotope (Loose Alliances, SoA, SoTA64)
Glasswalker (SSG)
Glitch (MJBB, SoTA64, LA, SoNA)
Ma'fan (LA, SoA)
Marcos (Year of the Comet)
Pistons (SSG, SoNA, SoTA63 & 64)
Riser (Loose Alliances - okay, so he gets a full section there)
Rigger X (SSG, SoTA64, New Seattle, SR3 BBB, SoA, SoNA)
Traveler Jones (SSG, Loose Alliances, SoA, SoTA63, System Failure, SoNA)
Winterhawk (SoTA63, Loose Alliances, SSG)

And invited guests on Jackpoint:

Snow Tiger, Lei Kung, and Pyramid Watcher

Sorry, the cake's done, I gotta go feed my kiddos...

I wouldn't say "with relative ease". You could convert characters from D&D 3.x to 4.0, but it's not easy; the same thing applies to SR3-4 characters. It's difficult, not just because of the stats, but because a lot of gear has to be changed over, new Essence calculations, some items have had their roles completely changed/removed, and so on. You'll also have to add new gear, factor in Qualities that the character should have, and a bunch of other things. In fact, doesn't the start of the conversion document say you should just build a new 400 point character, and add karma?

It is ia different engine. It's a totally different core mechanic, with totally different tactics required to build an effective character.

First, I wasn't the one who argued that a gun should be able to be attacked wirelessly, that was someone else. You'd have to ask him what he thinks. However, according to RAW, *all* items have a default Device rating that stands in for their matrix attributes. That means a gun can be hacked, although you might get into a debate as to what you can do once you've hacked it. Given that guns have had digital ammo readouts in 2060, I'd say that at the very least you can jam that.

If you decide that in your games, certain items don't have a "default", that's up to you. I'm just pointing out what it says.

1) Business must go on, and might get a lot of attention; but even so, SR4 doesn't just say that the infrastructure has been fixed. *Everything* has been fixed.
2) The stock market and Wall Street weren't targeted in the 9/11 attacks. They didn't really lose anything. However, some of the businesses that were based out of the WTC are still disrupted.
3) Iraq is a joke. They're still working on basic power and water to some areas. You can't have modern business without electricity, and they've been working on that for five years. The oil fields weren't bombed or targeted in the inital invasion, so they were more-or-less intact from the beginning.

The wireless infrastructure would need to be developed, marketed, manufactured, and delivered in less than five years; incidentally convincing everyone involved that it was better and more cost-effective than replacing the existing lines. Just planning for that sort of thing can take years.

The megacorps also took damage in the disaster. In fact, Cross went down as a result. Logically, the corps would have focused on rebuilding themselves, rather than investing in infrastructure. That's more-or-less why they left governments intact; so they could leave the grunt work to someone else. In fact, the Z-O actions showed that during the crash, the corps were more interested in protecting themselves than helping out. Why should they make an expensive and rushed investment in infrastructure? There's no money to be made in disaster relief.

That's not true, though. Despite massive advertising campaigns, there's plenty of failed products and TV shows that come and go each year. Remember New Coke? It died, despite a truly massive media blitz. The bottom line is that tons of advertising is not a recipe for mass obedience.

But if you're truly crediting the megas with the power I think you are, then it's still a Deux Ex Machina. Instead of a Greek god, or a fairy, we have the megacorps coming down from the heavens and waving their magic wands. Presto, everything fixed.

Rebuilding from scratch with KarmaGen kinda works.


Ever read Arsenal?


Yeah, we can see that in Iraq.


Sure, because corps have never made any significant investment in non-wireless equuipment before, have infinte money and people are being mind controlled by them via mediablitz magic.


So your computer is running Vista?

Love it. Love the way it's kept up-to-date, love the way Catalyst have kept the feel of the original SR while keeping it fresh, and made the rules better. A product that keeps getting better and better, fed by a lively online community here.

Personally, I never liked the NAN or the Tirs, even back in 1989.


I'm kind of neutral on technomancers.


I don't have a problem with SR4 char gen. Equipment purchasing has always been the most time consuming part for me and it has been an issue across all editions.


Shadowslang was cool but I'm fine with real swearing as well. I still use the occasional chummer, drek and frag.


Agreed.

Looking at the above list (and reading the countless SR3 versus SR4 threads here and other places) has made me realize that the SR3 and SR4 crowds will never come to agreement. But at least we can hopefully peacefully coexist

Not yet, will be one of these days. I haven't gotten a new computer anytime recently because I haven't needed it yet. I'll likely upgrade in the next year or so.

Of course, XP is still supported, and most game sthat come out run on it. If within a year of Vista coming out, no new games were compatibvle with XP? Yeah, I'd have switched over ASAP. I don;t really give a rats ass what my computer's running, so long as it runs the games I want to play.

Bull

XP is still supported because the customers want it to be (hence the "Vista downgrade" option). Games run on XP because they sell better than Vista-only games. And that's in a world where there's practically a monopoly in the OS for home computers market; in SR, it's much more competitive, and interchangeable programs that run on any given OS are standard. Actually, in SR, the customer is notably less fucked in that market segment than in Real Life. And still, the RL monopolist didn't get it's way with it's hugely advertised new product.

Corp Power, like all else, has it's limits.

Well, for starters Novatech is still around as part of NeoNet. I was under the impression that the nukes Winternight used were rigged to be essentially EMP only bursts, maybe a small concussive detonation but not on nuclear scale. I was never too clear on that though. If you want to preserve the Boston setting, simply considering this interpetation would be a good start IMHO - it's certainly the approach I use (cause IIRC Seattle got a bomb too no? unsure on that). Of course the ECSE did move (again) and logically would due to infrastructure damage (wait, if there was an ECSE left to move don't that imply it wasn't a full on nuke?).

Regarding NPC deaths - are you talking Boston specific NPCs or world NPCs? I don't recall any real detail about Boston specific NPCs being mentioned.



Yeah, you're kinda screwed there unfortunately While I don't mourn the end of the Deus/otaku mess (sorry, it was dragging on too much like the horrors thing for my tastes), it does leave you (and likely others) in a lurch. If your plotline didn't involve directly involve Pax's crew, I would (if I were GMing it, this is only hypothetical) run the remaining otaku NPCs you need to complete the story line essentially as otaku - they still need the implants (and can have implants without penalty) but have CFs and sprites to a degree. I know you said not to get you started (sorry about doing so), but this approach would preserve the fluff elements, which I consider more important than slavish devotion to crunch (besides, technos suck ).



Very true.



Cool 8D I can totally agree to that. In regards to specific elements, I'll make a new thread for the discussion (aside from and in addition to what we're talking about elsewhere). I feel it's important to bring in as broad a consensus as possible if the goal of the endeavor is to be met.



I guess in a way I've already done this, thus my failure to understand your (and others) objections previously. But agreed - SF needs to be made into a changing point, not an ending.