I remember not too long ago when there were multiple 10+ page threads with people arguing whether SR4 was good or not. It usually hinged on whether GM discretion was an acceptable thing to rely on in an RPG . Also, some people though that if something is released with typos, that means it's "low quality" (though I think most of them still played it, so I'm not sure why they cared what "quality" label we put on it).

Are those people gone? Have they given up trying to make us dislike the new game, it being not-so-new and firmly entrenched as the replacement for SR3 at this point? I sure hope so

there was, at least in the beginning, some mod-saying not to compare 4th and 3rd ed.
and people are keeping to that mostly.
i still don't like it.

Naw, they aren't gone. There's still a lot of SR3 players on Dumpshock.

Things have become fairly civil though. (I think) FrankTrollman got banned which helped cool things down a lot but like most flamewars it just burnt itself out and people moved on. I mean no one around here has the same level of dedication as Derick Smart.

shame, really . . i quite enjoyed his little flame wars with other people and general posting style . . and he DID raise some valid and sometimes even good points . .

iirc, frank never got banned. but i suspect he moved on with studies and other stuff...

He quite the board afther it got personal with him and some of the freelancers IIRC he called aaron a bad writer or somethign very close to that. then I think the mods suspened him or the threat of such made him leave

In a snit with Aaron he basically laid out just how bad the matrix rules are in no uncertain terms. That or fall out from that got him banned for 3 days. He took that as a sign and just stopped posting. But if you check his profile he's been on much more recently than that. Which is a good thing. I can completely understand never wanted to WORK with Frank, but running him off from DS just bad for the SR community.

heh, seems i missed something. but then i bail out of most of the threads that develop into these debates ones i sense forge theory being deployed (see the "gm discression" issue larme mentions, for example)...

I think it has more to do with the quality and timeliness that Catalyst is putting out products to support 4th ed. I'm sure their are still plenty of 3rd ed holdouts but most people have settled on their houserules to fix whatever they think is wrong with 4th and are plugging along, at least that's what I did when I finally switched over last year and started my 2nd 4th ed campaign a few months ago.

http://www.weregeek.com/2008/12/03/

If you like flame wars, jump onto a D&D board, the 3e vs, 4e debate is still raging. It happens whenever a popular game gets a new edition. The fans of the new editions say that the system is improved and way better then the old one and that anyone who doesn't upgrade is an idiot, fans of the old one say that the game is ruined and take it as a personal insult, then eventually everyone realizes that they won't burn your old edition books, so you can play whatever edition you want.

There are plenty of SR3 people still around, myself included.

However, we've already had the debates. The people who will be convinced most likely already have been, and there's not likely anything that can be said to convince the remainder. Frankly, if anyone brought up the subject again, it would be much easier to reference you to previous threads where the benefits of each system were carefully examined, than to rehash it all myself.

Plus, the mods specifically banned such debates for a while, and most people decided to respect that.

I believe this is the more relevant one.

heh, i had totally gorgotten about that one.

I'm a third edition holdout. I gave it an honest try to do exactly what you suggest, but the game is too fundamentally not-Shadowrun, in my opinion, for me to enjoy it. Wireless matrix? Very not-Shadowrun, IMO. Technomancers? Well, I thought the otaku were idiotic to begin with. Street samurai fun-toys being given to everyone else for free? Fails the "does this suck?" test. And a lot of the flavor stuff (the use of real-world four-letter words comes to mind as a very offhand example) strikes me as "trying too hard" to be up-to-date-and-did-I-mention-we're-edgy for my tastes.

But I don't expect anyone else to agree with me, so I just shrug and keep playing SR3.

I was a 3e holdout for a long time, but as more books came out, I slowly started toward 4; and I'd say after Augmentation/Arsenal, was my complete switchover in my heart(we had switched at the table, but I had a few stubborn remnants.) RC made it all the better for me.

I have no ill will at all toward SR3, and think they are indeed both good editions in their own right. But I can understand wanting to keep the discussions to a minimum, I do recall things being rather...hot for awhile.

So, they're not gone, they've just given up trying to change the minds of people who SR4. Good to know

I'm sad to hear that Frank is gone. It's true that he could be pretty irritating when he got into a flame war about the stuff he hated in SR4. But it was nice when he used his insider information to nuke silly rules interpretations that the devs never intended.

@Blacken: I hear you on SR4 being not-Shadowrun in many ways. But to me, that's not a bad thing, because Shadowrun was based on assumptions William Gibson made about future tech back in the 1980s. Now that it's clearer what direction technology is going in, the game needed an update... As does the whole cyberpunk genre, probably.

I play it because it doesn't match up to the "future" according to extrapolation from today. 80's Punk Future for the win.

That's a bit like saying that since Star Wars was written in the late 70's-early 80's, it needed an update and three extra movies.

Personally, I like them both. I whined and complained about what I percieved as holes in the rules in SR3, and now I'm whining and complaining about the rules in SR4. But I like either system and wish I still had time to play.

Similar story. I liked the Wireless Matrix as it finally seemed the key to solving the whole decker problem we GMs have had to content with for the past 18 odd years. I decided to buy 4th Ed after Unwired and Runner's Companion were released.

I am still pissed at them though for releasing 4th ed after I had just fully completed my 3rd ed collection and grown very fond of the rules.

Edit: it seems to be the industry norm they re-release the rules for every RPG every 3 years. Sigh...

- J.

Should they have improved SR3 instead of making a whole new game and calling it Shadowrun? Yes. Did they do that? No. Is there any use in pointing out how everything I said before, during and after release pretty much happened? No.

The good news is SR is under much better management. The bad news is it didn't happen 3 years ago.

Do I play SR4? I have to, my GM does games at conventions and we have to use the newest rules. I will say this for SR4... compared to D&D 4, Shadowrun 4 is the greatest game ever made.

Some of us First and Second edition fans are still here, too.

I must admit I have been wondering, after seeing some of the signatures (And my most hated of posters, Abschalten) why there was no digital mob with pitchforks and torches.

star wars have been continually expanded in just about every format known to man since the first movies was produced...

When my waistline expands, its not necessarily a good thing.

on the "fixing matrix" thinng, the AR did more there then any wireless did.

AR allows the user to move with the team rather then slump in som corner.

i suspect that most that play hackers stay in AR mode 99% of the time...

being able to access the matrix via mobile phone or similar has been available as far back as vr2.0, at least...

even cp2020 introed a way to drop out of VR and keep things online in some sourcebook, and that game had wireless in the main book iirc...

basically, the matrix envisioned by gibson do not allow for run and gun action with on the go hacking...

So did offline storage. And to a lesser degree, the RAS override.

Touche. That's why we're all playing SR4 now...

- J.

Dude, I have no idea who you are.

Did you shoot his kitten or something?

You can still keep your SR4 game "80's cyberpunk"-ish if you want it that way, I do. You just have to discourage some of the overly transhumanist elements, like replacing all that cyber with gear and hanging on to the "feel" of the earlier editions.

The beauty of Star Wars is that it takes place in the past. Even if we get to the point where we're advancing on Star Wars tech, it won't need to be 'fixed.' We can't say "how can that futuristic technology be futuristic when we're like 5 years away from having it?" because it's in the past. Technology will never evolve backwards, so Star Wars will always have the plausability of being a long time ago

Shadowrun on the other hand takes place in the 2070's, i.e. 62ish years from now. Sure, it's a fictional universe, but it's a universe that's a version of this one. It started out in the same place, it just took a few bizarre turns here and there. So when its technology starts to look antiquated, it starts to lose credibility. But more than that, it becomes campy. Have you ever played Cyberpunk 2020? In that game, they have flying vectored thrust cars, but wireless internet connections have a high chance to lose their connection anytime you use them while moving... You can't just pass that kind of stuff off as "another universe," when you're playing a sci fi game set 20-60 years in the future you expect tech to be plausibly better than modern tech. If it isn't, it stops being sci fi and starts being a joke. Needing to splice a hardwire connection (or carry around a sattelite dish) to access the internet is fast approaching campy--when the 2068 wireless network is worse than the 2008 version, it's time for an update.

@Larme... ironically by asking "have the nay-sayers gone?" you are bringing out the nay-sayers...

Oath.
I'd like to have been around the SR internet traps for the previous edition wars, though I don't know if these forums were going back then.

You missed the point. Thing is, Shadowrun was never about futurism, it was about a unique sci-fi/fantasy blend. I mean, what would you think if Shadowrun's magic suddenly evolved into D&D-esque, Vancian magic? You'd have the same net result.

Sci-fi is about vision. You don't go updating a vision every few years, trying to make it more modern; you stick to a bold vision, and improve it from within. I liked Shadowrun for the inspiring vision it offered, just like when I saw Star Wars in the theaters in 1977. Trying to update it took things from inspiring to insipid.

Mmm... delicious irony. Tastes like chicken!



Shadowrun is a xerox copy of Neuromancer, with D&D clumsily sutured onto it, with a few name changes to avoid copyright violations (though less name changes than you'd think). I don't think you have any basis for saying that a photocopy of the foundation of the cyberpunk genre has nothing to do with futurism. I'll grant that the magic and fantasy elements are not about futurism, but the cyberware and matrix are 100% futurism. When they get outdated they get silly, which I'll grant is not the case for elves, dwarves, trolls, or magic missiles

As for whether SR4 is less inspiring than SR3, could you possibly use a more subjective criterion? I happen to find SR4 more inspiring, because it provides new, more realistic visions of the future I can play with. I think that out-dated, campy ideas about the near future are uninspiring. We don't have objective bases to argue about who's inspired how much, it's a measure of personal satisfaction. I get that you don't like SR4 as much as you like SR3, but that's got little to do with me or the system itself.

Shadowrun has always been more than the sum of its parts. It was never Gibsonian cyberpunk, especially considering what Gibson thinks of Shadowrun. It was never D&D, and the magic system introduced some elements that were completely separate from Vancian magic. Shadowrun also pioneered several concepts, such as the dice pool system. Shadowrun was always something unique and special unto itself. I wish I could dig up that quote from The Role Playing Gamer's Bible, but it talked about how Shadowrun fused its separate elements into a new, bold, vision.


As stated previously, we're not allowed to directly compare editions. So, instead, I'll compare SR4 to other sci-fi visions out there. When you play Star Trek, you're playing in Gene Roddenberry's vision. You have a single, iconic view of the future. When you play Babylon 5, you have the same thing: a single, bold, iconic view. Even in near-future settings, the trendsetters are the ones that stake out a vision, and cling to it, while embroidering upon it.

What about SR4? We have slang that comes straight out of the WinXP user's manual. We have technology that's not futuristic, it's just modern with some chrome painted on. In other words, we don't have a view of the future, we have a view of the present.

Ok, well... I see we're getting off topic. Let it be known that Cain is still a naysayer and he is most certainly not gone, and he's just as lovable and non-prickly as ever!

It did. Lucas just make the wrong 3, and failed to hire a decent writer.

That camp is why some people still play it. I like that aspect of the game. Interesting anachronisms are fun.

I play both D&D and Shadowrun, shadowrun is great for gritty urban fantasy/cyberpunk, but when I want over the top wizards vs dragon tactical combat, I go for the the ol' D&D. Each system has something it's good at, and tends to be bad at other things(except FATAL, which is only good at misogyny).

sure, like 4th edition D&D is good for taking away any character option that isn't blowing something up or making you better at blowing something up (and for giving you cancer)...

i wouldn't necessarily say that i like all aspects of SR4 as much as i could (in fact, i really like the concept of the variable TN system combined with the shadowrun D8 idea presented in one of the shadowrun fan magazine things) but in the end, the mechanics are just a means to an end, and SR4 seems to fulfill the means part quite adequately.

oh, and if it's the game i'm thinking of, FATAL isn't even good at misogyny. it might be good for making other game designers feel better about themselves, though. it may also be useful as kindling, should you happen to be unfortunate enough to own a physical copy. just don't cook over the flame... might taint the food...

in the German Forums we also had some Nay-Sayers and lots of Players where especially frustrated because there was no Licence and no german books for 2 Years.The Situation for SR4 in Germany has only recently improved,when Pegasus Games got the Licence.
Now some of them(NaySayers) are gone and their back-Ups (other SR3 Players)moved on to SR4 .
Up until a few month ago I had (repeatedly) debates/discussions and some of them were Trolls,but now it's not that bad anymore

with a dance on lower waves
Medicineman

looks down to Stahlseele
Do I Know you from Germany ??

we agreed to disagree mostly

I'm fairly certain the paper in fatal is laced with an airborne toxin that is released when burned. It makes you want to roll for your characters anal circumference.

My group is still arguing about this heavily. We've got one guy who believes that 4E is far superior, the rest of us like having unique(and usually very well built) characters.

And so was tortoise hacking. The wireless matrix was evolution, not revolution... technically, AR would have happened even without the second crash - the rest was already pretty much there.

I think that some of the naysayers have left, some of them when Shadowrun 4 became the "default" game around here, and some of them when the "Shadowrun 4" and "Shadowrun" forums were joined together.

As for me, I don't see much difference between my SR3 and my SR4 games, be it with the flavor or the effects of the rules. A few things that bothered me have been fixed and I houseruled what I still didn't like, but it's essentially the same game I'm playing now.

He also failed to hire a decent director.