Look, Catalyst, you've made some major changes to SR4, somewhat under the Radar here. Many of us think they are flat wrong or unnecessary. Some of us think that they are a move in the right direction but poorly implemented.

What I think a huge number of your customers can agree on here is that were not 100% happy with the changes, for several reasons, and that you totally didn't ask us if we wanted to see such changes.

What I would like to see is you agreeing to suspend the print run and come down here and openly discuss with us, your paying customers, what we want to see and how we want to see it done before you go etching it forever into a book that some of us have waited 20 years for. This is a big milestone for SR, how about you make it more special by not introducing a bunch of controversial changes but instead including community feedback.

So who agrees that we need to have our opinions heard here?

[cue tumbleweed]

I second that.

Although I do not believe even remotely this will have any impact. It's more for self satisfaction, I guess.

Uhm. I know you don't want to read this but: if you don't like the chances, don't buy the book and ignore the errata. The changes are based on community feedback. and that's what also spawns the controversies as the community in itself isn't agreeing on ANYTHING.

Honestly, the errata to the Mnemonic Enhancer back in SR3 was needed, but bad enough - luckily, it only affected some characters and to a lesser degree.

Now, fixing the discrepancy between Attribute and Skill (Groups) was needed, too - but doing so in a way that impacts every character negatively was the worst choice possible - though, most likely, the easiest one.


And never, ever play at an open game again, let alone Missions.

Re: Karma cost changes:

It mainly depends on playstyle. Online, I never really count on or plan to raise anything - most games flounder before much if any karma is gained. At my table, we don't use karma at all.
Online, I saw more BP gen systems than karma gen systems used, so the impact of the change on online games is not that big.

Re: Combat spell changes: I'll have to check how that works out in play. Although I suspect that this is aimed more at the twinked, tricked out characters we often see here than some less optimized characters at tables.

You don't get much karma online and you don't use karma in your games, so there is no problem. Wow. Just wow.

Also: wrong thread.

heh, this will be a wasted effort...

Yup, but its not a terrible idea at the core of it. They could use the PDF as sort of a open beta to work out some bugs and check stability. I like most of the changes but a couple really irritate me.

I'll sign this petition. I hate the new changes.

While probably wasted effort, I will add my voice.

If the changes were optional rules, rather than canon, then the response "just don't use that" would be quite reasoanble. However, THey have officially stated that not only are these changes canon, but there will be errata to bring the other books in line with these changes (RC specifically.) And all future work will be based on these changes.

I can sympathize (as several people have) with the problems that they were trying to solve. However, the solutions chosen are not small changes. They are major rules changes. As such, they ought not be canon. Rather, since they are each aimed at solving a specific problem, they should be optional rules GMs can use if they have observed the problem. (Given how long Missions has been running with SR4 rules, I have trouble concluding that they just observed the problem with direct damage spell drain.)

Yours,
Joel M. Halpern

Lol, and my friend said this wasn't a full blown shitstorm yet.

Ah, SR became an MMOG - at least on the forums.

What precisely has y'all's panties in a twist? Can we get a list?

It became it the second those powergamers and munchkin realized that their prefered methods to play were adressed by the latest changes. And now they rage against it. As the usual MMOGer does on the boards of his game.

@ AH:

As far as I can tell, the changes to the cost of raising stats, and the changes to spells. It really reminds me of MMOGs after a patch where some classes got rebalanced. I am not sure if this outcry is really widespread though, or just restricted to a few.

Sign me up.

The karma change is the big one, although the gear restriction is there as well: potentially, they mean you may be forced to redo everything you've ever done to improve your character. The other changes vary in onerousness. I'll let others carry the torch on those ones for now, though.

I lol'd. Powergaming is barely affected by the changes. Regular characters get the nerf bat right in the face.

The changes are listed extensively in the changes thread.

This one is purely for people who want to agree to the petition.

If you don't agree kindly stop posting and go back to the other thread.

I fully support the idea of using the PDF releases as "betas" to find rules that are out of whack, and to use the community as proof readers. That makes sense to me for any game (i.e. D&D 4e and the major changes made to that game post print). But I don't think it's likely that we could have some sort of town hall meeting between the developers and fans and somehow come up with a set of rules that everyone is happy with. The fans just want to many disparate things as a whole.

I second the call for a concise list of what you want to discuss to have changed, because I *do* like a lot of what's been done: which *would* give me a voice in this discussion (rather than going to another thread as you've suggested) in the event that you get something changed that I wanted and push me into your current dilemma.

crizh: Kindly go bugger yourself. If you wanted this to be a real petition, you'd include a list of the most dastardly and game-breaking changes. As it is, no one can possibly answer your kvetching because no one knows what you're kvetching about beyond the fact that things change.

I take it that all of you posting requests to halt the print run have read the PDF? I'm reading it now and I have to say that it is a very slick piece of work so far. And it is obviously the result of a lot of hard work, so I think people who object to it (which they are perfectly entitled to) should at least do so politely. I really feel for anyone who put such effort into something only to receive abuse in return. What is this? The D&D forums? The devs are not remote corporate entities, but regular (though talented) gamers that we chat to here on the forums. They've all been playing Shadowrun for a long time and love the game as much as any of us. I'm willing to give consideration to any changes they make.

Crizh - I know that you requested this thread be a simple petition. As an aside, I would have recommended you use a poll in that case as you will never stop off-topic of dissenting viewpoints from being posted in this thread. But that might be as it should be. As a general rule, people are far more prone to voicing complaints than they are approval. A thread of objectors might get a very vocal minority contributing whilst people who are pleased with it may be quieter or just make supportive comments in other threads. I obviously don't know the proportions of people on one side or the other, but that's why I'm saying it is correct for people to debate the matter in threads.

I see a lot of positive improvements in this errata. My main concern is the change to drain on Direct Combat Spells and I'm reserving judgement until I've had a think about that one.

My 0.02

So you agree we should have a say?

Because once this goes to the printers your stuffed regardless of what conclusion you come to.

Excuse me, but they took the least broken builds and gimped them.
Changes to the pornomancer? No.
Changes to the ubersummoner? No.
Changes to the Mind Control Mage? No.

I never build munchkin characters, there's no point (mental exercise? Sure, playability? No). Heck, my current character actually gains a benefit from these rules: Improved Reflexes 2 now only costs 2.5 PP instead of 3.

The problem with the attribute raisin is that it now costs LESS to hard-cap an attribute by BP than it does by Karma. And skills are still too damn expensive. Hell, the last game I played a TTRPG that had a skill system like this a higher skill cost New Rating. You make shadowrun have cheaper skills and you'll see people raise them. You'll see people start with lower skill values by BP (it costs more BP than Karma) and as such spread out a little.

People hyper-specialize because improving their dicepools is EXPENSIVE. The solution is not to make it more expensive, but to make it less.

Nope. The solution has to take the wanted pace of character developement into the equation. the more expensive any type of advance is, the slower an character advances. naturally a game developer wants to have his game last as long as possible, building up some sort of illusion about endless advance. A player wants to advance his character the fastest way possible thus wanting to bypass as much time to develope as possible.

The change in attribute enhancement costs were a design change in the game developers direction.

So true.

My problem with some of those changes is, they adress the right issues, but solve them the wrong way (or not at all).

Shut up and take it to the other thread.

Seriously.

well, it does. the change adresses the discrepancy between attributes and skills considering cost effectiveness. the solution for your playstyle is to increase the amount of karma earned. but the real question is: is this change ENOUGH?

look, the best way to balance would be to look at each attribute and see, how many skills it affects. if a skill is worth new rating in karma, the attribute should be worth (sum of connected skills with it) * new rating in order to balance it out. this would count every dice brought into the pool as being worth the same. but this would make attributes A LOT more expensive and would be counterintuitive compared to any wanted streamlining. thus making the attributes being more expensive was the right way to go.

These are internet message boards. You've opened up a discussion about the need for a petition to correct changes. The bulk of the replies, while maybe not the replies you wanted, are on the merits of, or concerns regarding, that proposal. You're going to have to accept that topics take on a life of their own after you post them, and the individual poster has not been tasked with moderating their own threads.

The folks discussing the details of the karma changes, while still related to the topic of this thread in my opinion, might consider taking that discussion to another thread as discussing the details of every change in this one would get messy...

um, who made you lord of the bbs? you have about as much power as my dog benji does and benji says he can post here. i want the book ASAP.

Well I think to some extent we have had a say. I look at things like the Long Shot rules and it's hard to not to imagine one of the devs had been reading my battle to the death with Cain on the subject here on Dumpshock.

Rotbart van Dainig has a legitimate concern in that it's not possible for him to ignore the impact of these changes in games that are "official" for want of a better word. But there are two, well not counterpoints, but factors there which are as follows: Firstly, in such a situation each player must abide by the generally established rules of the community in order for games to work and be fair. An individual member complaining about rules changes is legitimate in so far as their personal preference but unless the complaint is taken up by the rest of the community then it does not carry the same weight because that member isarguing against the principle of agreed and established rules which the rest of the community has accepted. It may well be that the "official" community does side with Rotbart and it's their right if so, but this PDF has only been out a day so we'll have to wait and see. This isn't a comment about the validity of Rotbart's complaint - I'll have to think about whether I agree or not and it's certainly a rational point so cannot be dismissed as invalid. But the second aspect -less relevant but I'll mention it anyway - is that some of the changes (well the Direct Combat spell change) has the apparent aim of achieving better balance, so from the point of view of official games, it needs to be considered on there is merit to saying there was such a need independent of how it is received initially.

But outside of that legitimate area of concern on other people's behalf, I personally am not "stuffed" as I primarily GM and can pick and choose rules as I wish. But even once printed, it wouldn't be the first time that online errata has been produced to override what I physically have in front of me.

I absolutely defend people's right to object and complain but you asked if I felt we "should have a say." I know that the devs are very much a part of the Shadowrun community and I've chatted with them on countless occasions online, debated even and I'm pretty confident that we as a whole have indeed had a say in what they've done. I have no doubt that Dumpshock's debates have been a source for much of this errata.

You ask if we should have a say. I think you are having exactly that right now. If indeed you do get many people signing up in protest and asking for changes to be revoked, I think you probably will see the devs engage us all in a dialoge to discuss the matter (and probably will anyway). But from the changes I'm looking at so far, they seem to range from very positive (most of them) to need to think about. I'm doing that now and will probably post something on the subject of karma costs and spell drain when I've done so. I think less than a dozen people supporting a petition to prevent the print run probably wont (and shouldn't) persuade them to halt it. I personally am quite keen to buy the new edition. As I said before - it is absolutely gorgeous and people need to see the artwork in this thing.

I would like to hear the devs reasoning behind the two contentious areas. I can guess the reasoning myself but I think it would be interesting to hear it for the DS community. But I'm afraid if you were looking for me to say I support your petition, I don't. I find merit in Rotbart's critique of the attribute costs (whilst reserving time for myself to think about it) but I don't think there's reason to suspend a print run.

You have a say. If you don't like it don't buy the books. Hold out and play SR4 not SR4A, like all the SR3 holdouts.

Or buy the IP.

We are passengers here. If you don't like the navigating, get out at the stop.

First and foremost the total cost increase of character advancement with all it's implications for existing characters and karma-gen:
Like I said, the SR4 multiplier total used to be 11, with SR4.5 now it's 13.

Basic tactic: If you lack arguments to support your point, insult everybody that doesn't share it, across the board.

The options are: Either break with RAW, re-do (and gimp) your characters completely or cheat by simply keeping the attributes.
None of those is desirable.

I don't know how Mission games work, but I have been to some con games in the past. When it was BYO Character, the GM looked them over and approved or did not approve them. It did not really matter how "legit" the advancement had been, the character either was ok or not.
Does it really matter how much karma you spent on a character when you show up for a game? I'd thought the end result mattered, especially since no one usually knows how that karam was gotten anyway.

On the subject of the pornomancer, did he / she use Kinesics? Because that has been errated to have a max of three levels now. Serious question.

Whether summoning specialists and mind control are broken or not is a matter very open for debate. Shadowrun is a game where nearly everyone can kill nearly everyone else - that's why there's so much subterfuge, betrayal and reconnaisance in it. High force spirit or five grenades tied together... there's not always that much in it. As to mind control. Well, sure but most of the characters I see in Shadowrun games are quite willing to hold a gun to the head of their target's puppy if it will co-erce them to doing as they're told. Plus if you get enough hits to Mind Control a sec guard and make him shoot a colleague, you've usually got enough hits to Stunball the lot of them. I'm generally of the opinion that in Shadowrun it's about hitting them before they hit you. What you hit them with is less important.

IIRC yes, but only at level 5. That drops us from 51 dice to 49. Still more than enough to qualify as "extremely broken".

They track in detail how much Karma was earned how and when, then how it was spend.

..and usually, you can bet your ass when telling the GM about some houserules for cheaper character advancement, it's the latter.

It rather matters if you can trust the player to conform to the common baseline: RAW.

Then why note the total earned karma at all on the included record sheet?

Sure, I know that it's handled differently by you and I can agree to that style too - but it's not what's officially suggested.

When I attended Con games, and brought my character, I had no such rule, but my character had accumulated a lot of karma. The GM said "reduce those stats here, here and here", and I did. It all had been legit, but so what? The GM didn't want a character with those stats in the game.



Why? All I would care about is if the RAW was adhered to during the game. But I don't really care how much karma was how legitimately earned and spent, only if the end result - the character fits in a game. If it's too strong, then that's too bad.



I don't.

Yeap. Until the total karma. Its tracked for "Reputation"

The real issue here is entitlement. For some reason , people think they are entitled to play their character in whatever form, as long as its raw, at Missions games. If that's true, I am no longer sad we have no Missions games at San Francisco Bay conventions. It now seems like a blessing instead of a blight.

If the Pornomancer was an adept, increasing the cost of raising their magic and attributes should seriously ghimp those characters if legally built, right?


Character Reputation?

Wrong, it was a BP build.

See my signature.

OK, you all made me put the Mod hat on...

The Mods of this forum will decide what is proper in a thread and what is not. In any internet discussion there will be some drift from topic and some disagreement. If the Mods feel there there is a problem or a drift, we ask that you report it, and not self moderate. If we feel that there has been an infraction, we will take care of the matter after due diligence by the staff. Further infractions can and will lead to warnings, time-outs, and thread deletion.

So what I'm saying is please chill out on all sides here. Otherwise will will take action and you probably won't be happy with it. Enough people are going to be in a tizzy about this and both sides again need to take it down a notch and remember... its the internet, someone is going to disagree with you. Break the rules here though, and you will incur consequences

I don't think that is necessarily right...

*runs off as fast and as far as possible*

Meh. One needs to remember that the Pornomancer only gets that DP when doing one thing: trying to convince someone to have sex with them. It's not something that can be done in 1 Initiative Pass or even in 1 Combat Turn. For the amount of time it takes you to say "Nice legs, when do they open?" that sec guard probably hit you with 4 or 6 bursts from an SMG. Also keep in mind that the Pornomancer has quite a few conditional bonuses as part of that DP: First Impression and Home Ground for example. So right there they don't get the full DP unless they have never met the person before, and when that "target" person is in their "home ground" environment, which the book specifically states should not be mobile or even a "commonly encountered" area. Finally, the Pornomancer needs to gimp pretty much every other skill area in order to get that DP in Seduction. Also keep in mind that making a Seduction roll doesn't necessarily mean the person is prepared to give you anything you ask for in exchange for sex. While such a skill can be useful (even extremely useful) in some situations, its not what I would call "extremely broken."

Of the changes I know about, I like some and dislike some. Either of those feelings may change with time and further consideration.

I do strongly believe that the current technology affords both the producers of a product and the consumers of a product an opportunity to enhance the product before it becomes 'written in stone' ... well, paper.

Businesses and organizations of all stripes are taking advantage of the internet to distribute production expenses among a world community willing to help in concept development, design, and implementation of new products. Catalyst has in this community alone thousands of people who are quite adept at line editing and other editing functions. Use us. Let us poke at the PDF until you have an error free product.

Regardless of the changes to the rules, I'm tired of buying hardcopy which I have to edit with pen and pencil over and over again to fix typos and other changes. Or worse yet, be presented with the 'opportunity' to buy updated printings. Leave the PDF out here for a while, fix it with the help of thousands of interested eyes, and then sell me ONE, well-indexed, typo-free book that I will cherish for years. I know many roleplayers and their friends/family who see multiple print runs of the same book as nothing but a cash grab. That is a large part of the reason I left that other game... the one that causes cancer, you know? I got tired of buying yet another set of rules that I just knew would change in a couple of years.

Your product is very good, Catalyst. Make use of this opportunity to make it exceptional. Will delaying the printing press a month or two break your bank?

Different stat, recorded and modified independently, though derived from earned karma.

And if you don't know what your current Karma total is (as you obviously didn't write it down) how do you divide by 10?

And, IME with SR4, houseruled more frequently than not.

The average length of a campaign is between 6 and 12 sessions. In general this gives rise to two types of gaming, you either start with a competent character that advances on minutely during play (see e.g. GURPS) or a novice character that advances quickly. Where people start pulling their hair out is when they are in a game with novice characters who will advance only minutely during the course of play. You have to ask yourself, what's the point of all this detail and content put into a game, if they characters are never going the access it during play.

that's why the karma distribution system is only a guideline.