I think I'm about to open an obnoxious can of worms here, but D&D 4th Edition is fairly balanced. Like any RPG it has it's issues, but all the classes maintain usefulness in a party and you don't have issues like "the cleric is a better fighter than the fighter". It also receives timely errata, a rarity among RPGs.

The situations in your example both have pretty clear rules in the rulebook. Perhaps the layout of the rulebooks leave something to be desired. I suggest a GM Screen which contains quick reference charts to the most frequently needed information, and sticky-notes to mark the pages in your rulebook to reference the most commonly used actions. I can't think of a single game system that runs well when no one at the table is familiar with the rules.

If everyone in your group is new, including the GM, I suggest dividing up "rule knowledge" responsibilities. Tell the gun-oriented character that he should focus on the ranged combat/shooting rules and become very familiar with them. Tell the Hacker to focus on the Hacking rules and become familiar with them. In that way you can use each of the players in your group as a miniature "rules reference" onto themselves. This should help shorten the learning curve for all of you as the "rules specialists" can bring other up to speed quickly.

So you did. Merci!

This is what I do in my group. Along with the appropriate chapters in the BBB, players of mages need to know Street Magic, hackers need to know Unwired, street samurai, Arsenal, etc. etc. Saves me from having to both run a game and be a reference library.

I have yet to play Hero or GURPS, but I skimmed GURPS and was not impressed. Mutants and Masterminds maintains game balance by imposing artificial limitations on character advancement - functional, but shitty design. nWOD has huge power discrepancies, handwaving balance almost entirely in favor of "storytelling" - it is not something I would ever refer to as an example of a balanced game.

The Game That Shall Not Be Named, along with other class-level based systems, all impose artificial limitations on characters in attempts (often enough failed) to maintain balance. Again, functional, to a point, but bad design.

Yes, Shadowrun 4 has numerous balancing problems, as I have a tendency to repeatedly point out. These problems almost entirely fall in the costs of various player options, not in the actual game mechanics. Mechanically, it is sound, and the best system I have played.

I absolutely despise Paranoia. Almost as much as I hate Toon.

Well, love it or hate it(i'm a former, I admit), it is balanced.

Seriously, though...a lot of games run into similar problems. Make a ''class system'', and yes, you have balance-at the cost of customization. Add some customization to that, and sometimes(in the case of old school-multiclassing from D&D), those characters would somehow fall behind. And even in a class system, you run into problems-while Wizards are squishy at the beginning and cast spells, anyone who played a fighter will tell you that in the late-game, they mainly got to sit back and polish their sword(hell, the thief, too, since there were so many spells that could deal with those situations-I've been there in the fighter instance) while the Wizard did everything. Of course, you could argue ''because the GM didn't give challenges for everyone'', but really, I've seen it all to many times even with good GMs.

So, you have a system that lets you make what you want. Great, but yeah, then some balance issues will come in again.

Really, IMO, it's impossible to perfectly, 110%, balance any game. Unless everyone at the table plays the exact same character with the exact same stats and skills, stuff will happen sometimes. There comes a time where you should just whack balance over the head and tell it to go to the pub for awhile if it's getting in the way of having fun. I mean, try to balance it the best you can, but when it starts leading toward tons of rules-lawyering and pain in the ass situations and starts taking AWAY from fun(instead of adding it, which theoretically it should do), it's time to let it alone. Yes, I'm aware, that after 150 karma and about a year, his mage is going to be waay ''better'' than my sam. I'm still having fun, though, because it's what I wanted to play. Just my opinion, of course.

Enjoying/being impressed by a game has nothing to do with balance. What you'll notice is that spending 5 pts always yields a similar result. GURPS/HERO/M&M do this before and after character creation. SR4 can be considered mostly in balance along these lines with karma builds. In point build however the weight of attributes vs group skills is vastly different than the karma you would spend.

nWOD balance is different by giving equal weight to physical, mental, and social characters. Each catagory has a power, agility, and resistance attribute. nWOD does contain the same problem in builds as SR4 point build, though I think nWOD did a better job of discouraging min/maxing (example defense is the lower of dex or wits, forcing physical characters to put points in wits). nWOD was build for there supernatural lines to thus the mortals game is a bit cinematic (like damage modifiers coming in way too late for realism). In a supernatural game the social character with 9 dice in his power has an equal chance of winning against the physical character with 9 dice, providing the targeted resistance is the same to. Its not uncommon for the social Ventrue to dominate the physical Gangrel into sitting down rather than fighting. SR4 does not have (and perhaps it should not have) that level of balance across archtypes.

pornomancer, anyone?

and the dominating vampire seems to be a hollywood classic, or even as far back as the original stoker dracula...

Gurps is extremely customizable, although character creation is slow. Not as slow as SR4, though. It's difficult to unbalance characters, though.

Hero is also very customizable, but character creation is difficult and slow. It runs about the same as Sr4. Characters also can be unbalanced by accident.

Savage Worlds is very flexible, and character creation takes a few minutes. Novice characters are somewhat underpowered in relation to Shadowrun characters, but you can fix that by starting a bit higher. It's also extremely difficult to unbalance characters.

Wushu characters are virtually impossible to unbalance, especially if you use the 5-4-3 rule. Characters are extremely flexible, and take seconds to create. However, Wushu is very freeform, unlike Shadowrun.

Cortex, the engine behind the Serenity and Battlestar Galatica games, is a build point system involving stepped dice. It's very flexible, characters come out decently balanced, and creation times are about half an hour.

SR 1-3 had one of the first Template systems, which would be copied by many other systems, including White Wolf. The priority system was fast, simple, and easy to use. It allowed huge amounts of customizability, while keeping things sane and practical.

There's a short list based on the gaming books I have right now. I can look into others later, if you like.


Mechanically, SR4 suffers from serious problems at both the high and low end. At the high end, the dice pools become so large, there is virtually no chance of failure; the flattened probability curve sees to that. At the low end, we have the Longshot test issue; you can pile on the penalties, and not change your odds of success one iota. Edge is also broken, and the system depends on it for a variety of things.

Oh ffs. Edge is not broken, broken means it's unplayable.

As long as your players are using it within the middle ranges, it isn't too bad.

However, a high Edge and the longshot test is extremely broken. You can pile on the penalties, and it doesn't make a whit of difference. Edge and a large dice pool just exacerbates the problems of a large dice pool-- you can't fail, and you'll score even bigger successes.

Burning Edge is where the biggest problem lies. You can burn for automatic critical successes, which means you literally cannot fail. You could summon a force 12 spirit, and be guaranteed to get 4 services out of it. The worst part is that a low Edge is better here; you can more easily buy back your loss.

Escape Certain Death means your Edge is essentially extra lives in a video game. You can take eight direct hits from a Thor shot, and live to brag about it.

Edge is a core mechanic of the game, yet it breaks the game readily. If you don't use it to its full potential, it's not so bad; but once you see what it's capable of, you can destroy any challenge a fair game can throw at you.

And back to being really with you again. The foremost problem (but not the only one) I had with 4th was Edge. It is simply too easily abused. Yes, I know that can be house ruled. What I liked about 3rd was the lack of house rules that NEEDED to be implemented to prevent abuse. For D&D 3.x (more than 1400 sessions between both brands) we had more than fourty pages of house rules, about one in four needed. After just six sessions of D&D 4th we had more than twenty pages of house rules, all of them SORELY needed, to fix everything from the healing system to the skill system...and none of them worked well, even if we did see them as improvements even still. That's why after spending a bit more than $100 on 4th we dropped it after just six sessions.

For 3rd edition Shadwrun we had two and a half pages of House Rules.

We also played three sessions of 4th edition Shadowrun. Not anything like the problems with fourth D&D, but we were already gun shy from D&D, so when problems that NEEDED fixing cropped up, we just said the hell with it and reworked the characters for D20 Modern (ala Shadowrun 1st setting) and thence, finally to 3rd edition Shadowrun with the 2050 (actually 2048) base setting.

Games evolve. It's the way things are. Sometimes they evolve towards your (you and your players) personal comfort zone, (I saw 3.x as a HUGE positive evolution over 2nd edition D&D and much the same with GURPS 4th over GURPS 2nd) and sometimes they evolve away from it. But so much stuff was written for 1st through 3rd edition Shadowrun ...and it's all compatible pretty easily with 3rd edition (and almost not at all for fourth edition) that we have found our newest comfort zone: SR*3 with an earlier timeline background. This doesn't dismiss 4th edition Shadowrun (which I would play, but don't like nearly as much as 3rd) or even 4th edition D&D (which I won't play again on a dare unless they fix (change, I know that allot of people don't see any problem with it) the healing system and the skill systems especially. But that does NOT dismiss them. They simply miss our comfort zones.



Isshia

So what is wrong with suggesting that some people might be better off just trying SR3?

It still seems like the OP would be happier under the SR3 game rules.

Likewise while I'm a huge fan of SR3 both rules and setting, I realize that for some people SR4 fits their playstyle perfectly and would never recommend they play SR3 instead as they'd just be unhappy about it. It seems like people are getting upset that SR3 might be a better fit for anyone.

I understand why store owners don't like it (no product to sell), but why on an internet forum?

Cyberpunk 2020 has a really flexible system because it is so stripped down. Its easy enough to make even more customizable.

D&D 4e for me is not a roleplaying game. Unfortunately for the same reason that most RPGs I have issues with. Page count wise combat seems to be everything in most RPGs. GURPS has the problem that munchkin builds are not only possible but desirable.

It's why I am starting to like Forge games. Small neat books, with a time frame counted in 1-2 hours, well written where I don't have to cut out 15 years of male testosterone to play with a niece of mine.

I started to play roleplaying in the 1970's with Tunnel and Troll, C&S,and D&D. The D&D rules only have 1 page on how to be than GM and 1 or 2 page on how to make than advent and dungeon. I just change rules I donot like or are supid like wizard cannot wear armour or use swords in combat.

First we donot know what a matric or VR will be like or how to built one as we cannot do ether yet as we lacked the tech to created then. GURP rules arenot alway accurate reflect the real world either. To have than game that will be real world like to cover everything will take 20,000 400 pages books.

GURPS doesn't try to reflect the real world. No system does. Not just because it would take so much input data, but more because the whole reasons for RPGs is to escape the real world. I have my problems with the GURPS system too, but easily, far and away, it's the closet representation of cinematic or literatic (like my new word?) life in game form. That said, it's combat is clunky compared to SR and while I do definitely not agree that a muchkined character is any more desirable in it than in any other RPG (and less useful in the GURPS games I've played and/or run) it lacks a focus type. Of course it does, it's the GENERIC UNIVERSAL Role Playing System, yet this is still a detriment, as trying to do everything, they fail to do anything as well as the system would otherwise be capable of. What it seems best at is hard or better yet, semi rigid SciFi (like it's Transhuman Space setting).


Isshia

I like Chivalry and Sorcery the Rebirth as you must spend XP to improve your skills. It take time to learn spells and enchant items and time to learm skill too. You can do spell research or other research by finding books or scroll or ancient walls in temples and tombs which can take time to do. They have only 10 levels in spell catrogly like command,
arance,fire and etcs. But I than thinking expand to highter level spell and spent then to the company. They gave you formulate to demand time needed to learm spells by you MK Level compare MR level of spell..
At certain XP spending point you gain a level.

Oh I was just looking back at arsenal and some of the other books. How much actual play testing was involved. I swear skill wires were a more viable (as in balanced) before that dang skill master system (the one that suddenly allowed you to use edge when you were using skill wires.) Oh yeah and nano hives so that all you needed to do is get a cyber foot or hand and since the only thing nanites take up is capacity instead of a large essence hit you get the hand of awesome for next to no essence loss.

On a side though everyone who says that all of this is complaining is exactly correct. I am complaining because I do not like that the more you delve into SR4 the less it makes sense. This forum is Dumpshock aka the place where people go to complain about rules, or anything so everyone who has that attitude of take it somewhere else can cram it with almonds. Maybe our group should go over to SR3, but the thing is we are invested in the bad system that is SR4 almost to the point where we can't get out.... stupid double edged sword.

Oh the other thing that I notice is that SR4 is all about the spotlight and the problems therein. At least D&D with its many problems made it that when "combat" happened if you were there you partook in the action. If anything goes astral, or matrix anyone who is not a hacker, or a mage goes into twiddle thumbs mode. Since the combat system is slow on the matrix (and can be especially slow on the astral if only astral combat happens) everyone is shoved on the sidelines. I notice eventually that if I don't roll up a mage or a hacker (which I won't roll up a hacker because of the matrix rules) I spend a lot of time sitting on the sidelines if the mage ever wants to do anything.

Nice to see all the constructive criticism going on...


A considerable amount, believe it or not. We have 10-12 playtest groups providing feedback on most books. People might not like the results of the playtesting and feedback but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So just to address some of your complaints, since I'm here:


Note that the Skillwire Expert System (and DIMAP) allows only one and only one limited use of Edge with skillsofts (ie. you only get rerolls on a Test you completely failed , underperform but succeed and you don't get a reroll). Some of the other limitations of skillwires are described in Unwired. Note that skillwires have suffered no major changes between editions and are roughly balanced with previous editions.


This will be addressed in the very first errata with a corrected Capacity notation of "[2 (+1 p/ additional nano-system after the first)]" in the table on p.113 - this was accidentally dropped in editing. Playtesting indicated that for the type of bonuses and the cost of nanites, nanohives were/are balanced as is, and I'm still inclined to agree. Compared to the boosts provided by bioware and cyberware the advantages of nanotech are much less blatant and direct.


What you are complaining about here is not so much a gripe with SR4 but with Shadowrun at large. SR has always been a system that requires a GM master combining the three "worlds" and making sure everyone gets to shine. It is and has always been a game the rewards specialists. That said I firmly believe that if you've played SR1-3, you'll find that SR4 is actually less "about the spotlight" because certain character roles that were regularly sidelined are now integrated into group tactics (not just hackers but some types of magician). At the very best—with a group and GM familiarized with the rules— Hacking/Decking, Astral recon or combat, and even rigging took just as much time and required just as much sitting on the sidelines under those systems as it does (note - I'd actually say they took significantly more time in previous editions, but then again I might be considered biased).

Now, please carry on...

To be fair to him, the text doesn't say "Completely failed". It just says "failed", which means if you underperform on an opposed test, you failed and can therefore spend Edge.


That really doesn't address his problem, though. You still get a lot of nanohives at effectively zero essence.


Not much you can do about astral space; but for all the work done, deckers still dominate huge chunks of game time, most notably legwork and research. Runner's Companion just makes it worse, with the advent of "Virtual Contacts"; which can have information on virtually anything. In one Missions series I was playing in-- not even GMing-- I witnessed players leaving to get pizza whenever the decker started the legwork. I agree that rigging by the RAW was time-consuming and unplayable, but the Pizza Problem never cropped up like it does in SR4. What's more, since deckers and riggers were blended in SR4, one person can launch drone recon while running extended Data Search tests. Basically, it all comes down to one player who [accidentally] hogs the spotlight.

This problem was actually fixed in SR3 with offline storage. The decker had to penetrate physically in order to get the paydata. Dual-purpose deckers were also more viable under SR3-- it's difficult to make a dual-purpose decker in SR4, because you need more skills. SR4 actually made the problem worse, by making everything wireless.

Let me break this down as a response to what you said Synner.

Synner the problem I see with the skillwires expert system is that edge is allowed to be used on a test where it initially wasn't. It made skillwires more of a hit and miss kind of thing which then allowed for more of a risk factor involved using skillwires. The cost of said softs to get them at rank 4 were a lot cheaper then actually spending the karma for it. Now since skillwire expert system bypasses this, skillwires combined with the expert system is the win for anyone who wants to pay next to nothing in (BP or ) + some essence to get a whole ton of skills at rank 4 thus saving you quite a lot of karma. Then combine that with oh say an obvious cyber hand with Neocortical r3 nanites. All of the sudden if you combine that with skillwires or knowsofts you can gain a 7 in all logic based skills when you would normally have a 0. What gets me is that it seems like most books are created w/o taking into account the rest of the SR4 books. If you start mixing things with arsenal and augmentation you can pull out the twink while still being totally legit. All I mean is that if you look at some of the books individually they are nice, but when you start combining them you wonder how much thought was given to what the other previous books had in them.



Yes the fact that combat has always been a problem in the SR world and the fact that people steal the spotlight. This is a problem. However it would have helped if the whole thing was more streamlined then it has been already. When astral combat goes down and my character doesn't have anything to really do until that is finished almost makes me want to groan. Yet at the same time if I'm not in the thick of it I don't see why my character should be involved... yet this means that when this type of combat breaks down I have to sit on my hands for thirty minutes to an hour before combat is resolved.... let me say that again 30 mintues to 1 hour if not more sometimes. For instance last session I spent a good part of 2-3 hours saying how well I hold my action.

Crazy intense combat the GM switches over to the mundane or adept not involved in the astral combat "What do you do!? WHAT DO YOU DO MAN!"

Player: "Well since I already have set up my stuff which took less then 5 minutes of spotlight I hold action until instructed to blow the facility."

30 minutes later the GM whips back to the player "Man the action is really intense what do you do?"

Player: "Since I can't participate in all this I still hold my action." If a GM decides to throw a challenge the players way because they have had enough action it is very obvious that they are being thrown a bone, and if the player just wanted to set up a perfect situation and doesn't want to suddenly enter combat as well or have all of their work discovered in three to twelve seconds... well you catch my drift. It just makes it hard to GM when you try to give every single player something to do w/o screwing them. If combat is streamlined and only takes 5-10 minutes then it's not hard for players to get back in on the action, but if astral combat or hacking takes forever then it leaves the rest of the players in the dust or going to get pizza or food for the group (which I have already done on one or two occasions.)



On the subject of playtesting I was under the impression that a lot of the playtesters were not listened to. There was another thread where people were bringing up the "wasn't this playtested?" and the response they received was "yes, but we didn't like what they said so we threw pretty much all of it out. You should have herd the language and comments they used." After that happened I was not aware that playtesting was really factored into the creation of the SR4 books to a large degree. Also for how long are the playtesters given to help with a single book before and after release on average? A week? A month? A year?

Again I really want to like the system as the fluff and the world are simply amazing, but I would really hope for a more streamlined set of rules. Thats all. I just don't think SR4 delivered and my group is starting to feel the same way.

Generally speaking such issues come up in playtesting and are judged on the basis of whether or not they'll fundamentally change gameplay. The skillsofts were discussed extensively and no one had a problem with the build you present - it is expensive but its viable. Though possible, is that dicepool a gamebreaker? I don't think so. Of the dozens of builds field on places like DSF how often does it come up? Authors have all prior books available to them and the lead developer on each project is responsible for ensuring compatibility.


My point was/remains that this is a result of Shadowrun's "three plane paradigm" and not a mechanical issue. This would happened in all three previous editions of Shadowrun and will continue to happen since we will not be melding the three "planes" further than they already are. That said, there are numerous ways for GMs to keep players from feeling excluded when such situations occur, it just takes a little extra planning and organization.


If astral combat or Matrix combat with a single character in your group is taking 30 minutes to resolve (even 15 minutes) something is wrong. Particularly astral combat tends to be a one-on-one affair (or otherwise involves a magician calling on Spellcasting to level the field.) Furthermore the absence of maneuvers in astral combat make its much more linear and faster to resolve than other types of combat. In fact the only occasion I've encountered where astral combat extended beyond a couple of turns (and 15 minutes) was when a character tripped upon a patrol of hybrid form ants and a true form warrior ant.


I reiterate my point above. This particular "problem" has little specifically to do with SR4 and is common to all prior incarnations of Shadowrun and derives from the three plane paradigm. Hacking should typically take a little longer than astral combat to resolve but unlike previous editions SR4 hackers can actually contribute to combat without pulling out a gun. How much this slows down play (or not) depends on your familiarity with the Hacking mechanics but the "three plane problem" is definitely abated.

Despite Cain's misguided assumption that for some reason hackers legwork takes more time than other characters this simply isn't true - not when anyone on a team (hacker or not) can do Data Searches, anyone can dispatch an agent to gather intelligence, and anyone can possess the aforementioned Virtual Contacts from Runners' Companion) . Also despite in face of claims to the contrary, I've been playing SR4 for more than 4 years now and in my experience Hacking is not only much faster and streamlined than decking was in terms of simple mechanics, but the hacker can now have an active role in combat whereas previously he was relegated to a support and overwatch role (meaning the hacker was in turn sidelined). If the hacker opts to double task as a rigger even more so (whereas previously the rigger got to be involved if he had drones but the hacker mostly sat out the fights.)


Impressions can be deceiving. Particularly if you are paying attention to one single guy (for the record, Frank Trollman) who was pissed because his suggestions were ignored by other authors and the fact that the playtest feedback he recieved wasn't up to his standards. To the best of my knowledge none of our other authors/playtesters has ever violated their NDA like that and made any such claim, so I'm guessing that's where you got the impression.

I listen to all the feedback, positive and negative, and take in what I feel is appropriate - developer's privilege. I playtest most of the rules at my table time allowing.


This varies considerably from book to book and suprisingly bears little direct relation to whether or not some, Arsenal was playtested for a good 6 months, Augmentation considerably less and I believe less problems crept through with the latter than with the former. Some chapters get playtested for longer than others too.


That's your perrogative. From your posts I believe this has a lot to do with the difficulties in finding a game balance that remains consistent between various gamemasters. I honestly believe some of the problems you've posed are non-problems and simply require the gamemasters to come into agreement on how to balance their game (as opposed to the game). To address Proper application of visibility modifiers (typical conflicts shadowrunners are involved in deduct as much as -5 from spellcasting pool just from cover modifiers before factoring in other visibility modifiers),then there's background count, aspected mana, Edge to boost resistance rolls, Petite Brume grenades, and a handful more tricks to balance things out. This by does not mean to imply magic is not very powerful, it is, and there's precious little unaugmented mundanes can do to counter it directly. However, this has always been true in Shadowrun and one could say there's precious little an unaugmented mundane could do against a heavily cybered street sam with an LMG.

That's not a clear distinction on DS these days.

Since this is calling me out personally, I'll respond in kind.

I haven't played in as many SR4 games as Synner has, obviously. But unlike him, I don't have the developer's godlike eyes on the game, with the ability to enforce the spirit of the rules upon a game. Instead, I do what all the rest of us player do: I make my best guess based on what's actually written.

Now, based on playing games without a dev's omniscient vision, I can say truthfully that in SR4, deckers dominate legwork. If you just tally up the number of Data Search + Browse tests made during an average game, you'll see what I mean. And that's tests-- since Data Search is an Extended test, we're talking many more actual rolls. Deckers have the quickest and easiest way to run down information, just by running that Data Search test. The best anyone else can do is "call a contact"; if it involves the Matrix, the decker can do it better.

Now, while I haven't been playing SR4 as long as Synner has, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that I've been playing Shadowrun longer. And I can tell you that in previous editions, simply by using offline storage, you could keep the decker from being sidelined/dominating the scene. There were also hitcher jacks, and like I said in my last post: combination deckers were much more feasable. The decker/Samurai was a nasty combination, the Decker/Rigger was the master of overwatch, the decker/face excelled at matrix meets, and the decker/mage, while a bit more rare, was the ultimate master of the "three planes".

While Frank's been the loudest, he's not the only playtester who's made complaints. I've heard from a few people that they felt their playtest opinions were ignored, and occasionally taken in completely the opposite direction. I've also heard stories about fixes for Agent Smith and Bloodzilla that were ignored for the core book and Street Magic, respectively. As I recall, fixes were dismissed on several things, all because someone upstairs thought it wouldn't be a problem. And if Dumpshockers hadn't raised a ruckus over them, they would never have been fixed at all.

*ding ding ding* pissing match, round 1001, fight!

I wouldn't call it a problem with GURPS being Generic and Universal, but a problem with GURPS mechanics itself.
HERO is also generic and universal and can emulate ANY type of game you possibly want - including any edition of SR. As a matter of fact, hands-down HERO is the most versatile system I've seen/worked with.



This was supposedly a problem in CP2020 as well, at least in terms of hacking. I simply don't believe it. It was not hard when playing CP2020 to deal with netrunners/deckers in real time; all you had to do was limit their movement in real time to rounds just as you did characters in combat. Since a round was only 10 seconds, you just dealt with the decker in the same manner as you did everyone else.

Essentially, what I'm saying is that everyone being sidelined when a mage or decker 'does their thing' is a problem with how the GM runs things, not a problem with the system in question.

That's a god damn lie. You go read Phoenix Command, damnit.

*sporfle*
Dammit, that's another monitor gone.
*wipes tea off*
Jaysus Chrispie, there was a game that truly required calculus and 6-hour combat sessions for a single round.
It makes you look fondly at the Critical Hit tables for spoons in Rolemaster.

Hey, I didn't say it was quick, but it tried damnit.

I love hero. But it has some fundamental issues in combat due to it being originally designed as a comic book RPG. But it does tend to produce characters that have much more equiv power levels, as long at the GM doesn't let people do crazy things. It's kind of astonishing how much a spell like manball costs in hero. Fully invisible, area affect ALD killing attacks are EXPENSIVE.

I have to disagree a little. Hero is massively customizable, able to recreate just about anything. Combat does have some issues, but the biggest problem is character creation. Just like SR4, the process is difficult and unrewarding, and it is very easy to accidentally create gimped characters, as well as massively overpowered ones. One of my early tries, I forgot to buy up actions, so I was stuck with one. Since everyone else was running around with 4-6 on average, I ended up spending a lot of combats sitting on the sidelines. The 12-action character, while expensive, is also many times more effective than anyone else, almost to the point of being broken.

Another try, I ended up with a character with a 9-die armor-piercing HKA. That's enough to take out a tank! I wasn't even trying to create a character that powerful, since we were going for a street vigilante style of game. When I really got into it, I created a character with a cosmic power pool big enough to throw repeated 75-die attacks. And all this was at the default build points or less.

Combat was three seconds (roughly), despite CP2020 having two books out on hacking, it was still long protracted runs in a dungeon style environment. As was and still is the old adage "when the netrunner gets busy, the rest go for pizza". However, over the years we have come up with some very good solutions on making the game run faster with netrunners. One was running a hack with netrunner cards, the other was simply turning hacking into skill based actions, which were really fast to roll.

Call of Cthulhu ultimately had more use of datasearch skills, since we would rely on the fixer with the phone for the word on the street.

Shadowrun 4 has some really good ideas with the Matrix, but I fear that we constantly run into the same problem, the more awe inspiring and more customizable that realm. The longer it takes to also play in it and still we have problems.

btw, cpv3 uses something similar to AR when it comes to hacking

You know I was one of the few who was looking forward to CP v3, it is like someone hollowed out the book and filled it with the fruit of the desert.

I bought v3 as soon as it came out... played it twice and now if a player needs to be punished for a stupid question, just point to that book and say "look it up from there". Yes, it's that bad imo. Though if you like green barbies, go for it!

If I was GM the first thing the Corporation, government the Mr Johnson would they take this laying down. They would most likely sent than team of runner to deal with them. An other possible it they hose too many Mr Johnson no one would hire then as they have a bad rep. Or every corporation, govenment and other groups wuold post than 100,000,000 dollar tax free bountry on each member of that group.

I seriously say this about Cyberpunk v3: Shadowrun(any edition) is more realistic!

I collect RPGs, I flipped through Cyberpunk v3, and it is to date the only RPG that I put back on the shelf, and never looked at again.(Any other system..I might not buy it, but I will look at it, and constantly debate if I should..but, Cyberpunk v3 *shudders* Everytime someone buys that book, a kitten dies! Save the kittens!)

I than thinking of getting this game. One time we play than game of D&D where we change alot of rules. Than player was dieing of cancer an have only 6 month to live. We allow player to level up more than one levels at a time. The rules stated you can only level up 1 level at a time and you where place 1/2 way in XP to the next level and all other XP was lost. He want to play than superdouly game from all way from 1st level to the top level of the Inmortal.

heh, guess im a freak then as i not only got the main book, but the edgerunner sourcebook and some other stuff

but then i prefer fun over realism, if i want realism i go watch the news...

It would need a 200 pages errata to get it working for me. The rest is good The amount of typos, missing words/sentences/paragraphs is just too huge to even bother for me. There's quite many pages that say: read more on p.xx, but that page has nothing about the matter. There was even couple of places where it really said look from p.xx, without a page number The game has some nice ideas and CP overall rocks, but... as is, it's just a biiiig no. As I got next to no chance to visit a rpg-shop around here, I gotta order the games online. So I did get CP v3 and SR4 at the same go so the "which to play" wasn't an issue after reading the books. But before reading, v3 did sound maybe bit more tempting...

It is such ungodly crap that I refuse to acknowledge its existence.
The pure memory of CP2020 should not be sullied by its mention.

I did ages ago the Edgerunner fanzine which I compiled into one magazine. It was a pretty good magazine, which though I have not seen in ages. I wonder does it still do the rounds... ?

I had the pdf around here somwhere...

Follies of youth.

iirc, mike pondsmith ones said something about the state of the first cp2020 print was not much better...

pure memory, or rose colored hindsight?

Mike always liked CP2013 and went on to use the skeleton to create CP2020. His one regret was not making it as good as CP2020.

He wanted to develop CP2020 more in the direction of Mekton/Champions (Fuzion) direction, hoping to capture his entire demographic (Cyberpunk, Scifi fans, anime fans, and superhero fans). The big problem also encompassed that he hated running a company and would have just wanted the paycheck and being able to sit and write.

He then went on to do just that by basically removing R. Talsorian and working on Deus Ex, until he finally tried to remember his notes and write up CP v3. We end up with a fried dead body.

I think the only positive thing I've heard about CP over the years is:
"I had this gun glove... thing... with spikes! If I successfully stuck the spikes into anyone than the shotgun shell in the glove would go off and kill them instantly!"

I also heard that while SR might have guiltlessly thieved from William Gibson, CP took the Sprawl Trilogy (Chronicle? Was there 4 books or 3?) and made alien love children with it. Seeing as I love "Snow Crash" and "The Diamond Age" over Gibson... this had limited appeal to me.


Oh and I think we all have rose colored hindsight. I have such fond memories of D&D 2nd edition... Only to go back and read the rules today and wonder how the fuck I put up with this shabby shit for 12 hours a weekend.

Fuck encumbrance rules, fuck them in their eyes.

A lot of that is GM and other player intervention to protect people from themselves, and keep the overall power level under control. We also allowed rebuilding the character after the first game session for free, as sometimes clever stuff doesn't exactly work out as planned. The rules explicitly say you can't apply limitations to a VPP pool cost, so no, you can't have a 250 point character with a 375 point pool without cheating and the GM being an idiot.

But there are examples of trying to build common objects, like flashlights and blankets, under hero that can get very absurd.

One of the funniest thing ever happened was on CP2020. The group was suppose to break into a warehouse with a single security guard in front. After about dozen characters died thanks to equal amount of botch rolls on the row, the last survivor jumped off the roof where he was keeping an eye and then we took a little break This incident, same with rolemaster's resistance rolls, my group still remembers with fond memories and cold chills

But so far a ruleset haven't ruined the game, ever. Though after a long break Werewolf, one combat was enough for all to change the game once again after the game was over. Rolemaster, old WoD and CPv3 aren't on the list of games to play again because of their rules, but on when those games were "new" (cept v3), they were all good.

If you could, that would be awesome. I'm going to track down Wushu and Cortex and take a look at those.

I would really, really have liked to sat in on that game and have seen what the GM was doing. Doing Matrix legwork is a matter of the player (it doesn't have to be the hacker; a detective or occult investigator type with a Middle Lifestyle can do the same thing) rolling Data Search + Browse Program Rating and the GM reciting the appropriate amount of information that the player would receive.

Player: "I want to do a Matrix Search on Nabo."
GM: "Roll."
Player: "Six hits."
GM: "You discover that Nabo is an orxploitation performer who has a concert going on in the Redmond Barrens -- blah, blah, blah."

It's about ten seconds for the player to state his intent and roll and then tack on up to 30 seconds, depending on how long-winded the GM is. If this process is resulting in players getting bored and leaving the table, either 1) the GM is making the player roll more than is necessary to get the job done or 2) the players aren't immersing themselves enough into the game to enjoy it during the short span when they aren't rolling.

Technically, while most objects are wireless-capable, not every wired object broadcasts a wireless signal to latch on to. Only access to the Matrix and PANs are wireless and only if said PANs are operating in an "open" mode. A hacker can't hack an object if he can't get a signal to its node. Even in 2070, I often require that my hacker PCs actually physically breach a system through a direct datajack connection (resulting in trespassing and firefights) because the target wasn't dumb enough to leave it connected to the Matrix for anyone to access.

I was curious about Cyberpunk as I had never played it before and flipped through v.3. I was honestly disgusted and put the book back. It was not user friendly. The font was obnoxious and difficult to read, the art was tacky, and the whole thing felt unprofessional and unrefined. Just look at the travesty that is the publisher's website. I guess that designer has never heard of Cascading Style Sheets. And, I've been finding, that this is true of many games published today. Writers may develop great game mechanics but presenting those in a way that uses efficient information architecture is severely lacking. White space isn't a bad thing if it makes text easier to read. Save a kitten, hire a professional graphic designer.

With us, it was always those shots to the right leg. For some reason we would also shoot and be shot in the right leg, to the point we were thinking on just placing SP30 armor on just that one leg.

Because combat was so lethal we preferred using cover every time. We also had armor degradation rules as well, so it meant that when you got shot in the vest you would most likely have to buy a new one.

-Chrysalis

Wushu Open can be found Here. You can also find the Wushu Open reloaded project on RPG.net, which is where I got the 5-4-3 rule from. Well, that and the Roanoke setting, which is all kinds of awesome.

Cortex is the engine behind all the games for Margaret Weis Productions. It looks like they've got several hot settings on their production list.


It's not one roll that does it, it's the few dozen others that lead up to that roll that cause problems.

Mostly, I've seen this in Missions games. In those games, you get more information the better you roll. Fair and appropriate, yes? The problem is that using Contacts, they roll a straight test, while deckers roll an Extended test. That means a decker can keep rolling until they get bored or the GM calls a halt, telling the player he's found out everything there is to know. Agents actually add to this problem: while you can send an agent back with whatever you want the players to know, the player may want to verify the information or chase down interesting bits on his own. So, it's not just one roll: it's a series of two or three rolls, until the decker hits the threshold.

Now, when you multiply this by the sheer number of Data Search rolls made in a game, things get out of hand rather quickly. When I GM'ed On The Run, (a negative experience by itself) for the second time, it took tons of Data Search rolls on tons of topics rolls before they even found the possibility of a Nabo link, then a few more to learn about Nabo, his security, and things like that. And even after the info came back, and a plan was formed, they needed a few more data search rolls to get what they'd need for their plan. So, the decker was handed a list, while someone went on a soda run.

You can slow down this problem by bouncing back and forth between people doing legwork, but sooner or later, it comes back to the decker looking for answers. And the way the fluff and the rules are written, it's easier and smarter (and safer) to have the decker do the Data Searching anyway.


Like I said, that's not an improvement that SR4 made (although it certainly doesn't mention the possibility the way that SR3 made a big deal out of offline storage). You've just gone through all sorts of hoops, breaking a setting convention, in order to recreate a simple disconnected hard drive. That also doesn't address the issue for dual-purpose deckers, who could effectively fill more than one role.