Heh.



I think my post actually answers yours fairly well here. First you say you aren't arguing for avoiding a cap. Then you say there is no subjective need. Finally, you imply they should avoid it. My post, on the other hand, supplies that subjective need. Note I don't say every character should push themselves to 6 everywhere, I'm just saying that if people want something, they can get it.



You haven't turned anything on its head. You are putting the onus on the GM to be creative, as was I. If the group is happy with their uber DP's and multiple specialties at 6, who are you and I to tell them otherwise? However, I do find it amusing you think it's the player's responsibility to make the GM run a good game.



Here, unfortunately, we have a problem. That wasn't my argument, and you twisting it doesn't help. I don't think it's immature for me to argue differently than you. I was responding to the general sentiment that somehow players are at fault for wanting their characters to be good. You seem to have taken that personally.

Finally, we agree again. GM's exist to help weave a good story and challenge the players. Nothing I said conflicted with that, and yet you seem to think I did. But, why can't the players blow the GM out of the water once in a while? Are they supposed to be like 5 year-olds wrestling their dad? Their only victory is at his sufferance? When I GM, if my players come up with a brilliant plot that kills my BBEG and circumvents the nasty obstacles, I just say bravo. I always have another BBEG.



So, we both agree then that the game writers intent shouldn't be interpreted as an objective measure of appropriate play, and that players and GM's should have a cooperative relationship that results in a good game. Great.

My arguments from my previous post were, in order.

1: People in the real world try to get better at things they do. Runners, by dint of experience, will do the same. My argument is players are RP'ing by trying to get better. I never once said they should sacrifice their character development for stat development. If the hacker who hates guns collects a bunch of karma and wants to go full gun bunny out of nowhere, I'll be right there with you kicking the drek out of him.

2: Players shouldn't be limited by some arbitrary limitation if the rules allow for it. We come down on different sides here, but I don't see why you were so flippant about my argument. If the group in question enjoys playing games where characters develop into having 6's in multiple specialties, let them. It's their game. Your example of a SEAL is perfect. After running the shadow for 15 years, you bet plenty of characters will look like that, or better, depending on their style. The group should decide balance and style. Not you, I, or anyone else. If they want to generate 100 BP lame-ass people and roleplay running a Stuffer Shack, great. Conversely, if they want to generate 1000 BP characters O' Doom, they should be allowed to do that. All your pretty analysis doesn't change that.

3: People shouldn't attempt to interpret the will of the designers of the game from rules, or anything else for that matter. My reason for this is two-fold. First, it's silly, because people can twist the interpretation any way they want. Second, IT DOESN'T MATTER! I just get tired of someone coming on forums like these and saying, "You're playing the game wrong because the writers said blah!" It's drek.

What I really find funny here, is your arguments on your own character. I have read several posts now where you talk about your character developing her own magical style, and how you made roleplaying choices, not power choices, yadda yadda. When other people accuse you of cherry-picking spirits, you deny it. That's cool, I think your idea is great. But, other people are saddling you with the "munchkin" tag or in some cases saying you are playing the game wrong. "Only GM's should make Traditions." Of course, it's your game. Why should a group of runners who all rock Longarms 6 be any different?

You are right, Shadowrunners are not AVERAGE... They are skilled criminals that walk the shadows and shoot people in the face for money... However, to do so they DO NOT NEED to have mass numbers of dice to succeed... that is a fallacy that you continue to support, and it is wrong... you can perform the same skills within the guidelines of the skill descriptions... Skill level 3 is perfectly acceptable for a PROFESSIONAL CRIMINAL... just because YOU apparently desire High Dice Pools so that you can minimize or eliminate any possible failure, And because I prefer to have smaller Dice Pools and experience Challenging scenarios does not make either of us more right than the other... the only thing that HIGH DICE POOLS do is to remove the randomness from the game... if you do not want the randomness, then don't roll the dice... just use freeform and be done with it...

AS for "What the Hell Average am I talking About?" the avergage skill level for the characters will be from 3-4... Take a GOOD LOOK at the rules. they allow you to be Best of the Best in ONE skill at character creation or Epert in Two... ALL OTHER SKILLS MUST BE 4 OR LOWER, thus my comparison... therefore, your average shadowrunner will not be the best in the world at what he does... a single skill at 6, or 2 at 5, is not going to make you unstoppable, and you will have a specialty that you can rely upon, but the Quest for teh ever incrementing Dice Pools is ludicrous in my opinion, as the system is not designed to support such a level of campaign, especially for a long duration... I will agree that you can do so, but when you do, the verisimilitude of the world begins to break down drastically...

And I will say it again, because you appear to be missing the point... The designers of the system clearly intended the characters to be in the 10-15 Dice Pool range. All indicators (Archetypes, opponents, contacts, Skill Level Descriptions, etc) point to this... IF you were to Play/run the game with this in mind (See Kerenshara's previous post on the subject), you would STILL succeed in your tasks (As there is absolutely NO NEED to have really high dice pools), and the GM would NOT have to escalate the opposition to increasingly insane levels to provide a challenge... This is the Power Creep that I continue to refer to... Once your characters are throwing insane dice pools, the opposition needs to be compensated if you are to be challenged... once you are again challenged, you adjust by once gain inflating dice pools and the cycle starts all over again... Why not just accept the challenge?

If your goal is to WIN, well, insane Dice Pools will definitely get you there, but for those who would rather enjoy a good story, those Dice Pools are less than necessary, they are a distraction... The Dice Pools are an abstraction to provide a random resolution to events in the story... if you have a dice pool so large that randomness is removed, then, in my opinion, you lose out on a lot of story potential...

You and I both disagree on the "intention" of the rules as designed, and that is okay... we can both be right at our own gaming tables... However, I submit that you may be missing out on some challenging roleplaying... and before you say that I am missing out on Epic Play because I do not pursue those insane Dice Pools that are commonly touted here on Dumpshock, let me just say that I have played such games, and I find them extremely boring... playing a game where there is never a chance to fail in anything that I pursue is not enjoyable... I prefer the chance of failure to always winning at whatever I do...

Looks like I have rambled and ranted on enough... Apologies...

Keep the Faith

If I may say a thing or two here...

1. Character and "Stat" development should be concurrent with the story that is being developed by the GM. Everyone is responsible for the story, not just the GM or the Players alone... Everyone...

2. I think that the point here is that we need a measureable scale here... people develop their skill sets over time. That SEAL mentioned above probably took that full 15 years you are talking about to develop those skills to those levels... in contrast, the Shadowrunner can do so in a matter of months (or less), and this is where the breakdown in verisimilitude occurrs... I do not care how good you think you are in a subject, you will not advance from Professional (Game Term) to the BEST in the World (Game Term) in just a few months... this type of advancement requires years of training and experience... and should be reflected in the world as a whole... If you are creating such characters at start, then you should show those dedicated years of training in your backstory, and not be the "typical shadowrunner" who, at a minimal age, outshoots, outdrinks, outsmarts, out romances, out negotiates, yadda, yadda, yadda those people who acquired their skills/specialties over 3 decades or more of professinal experienc. And yes, I will acknowledge that there are some exceptions to this dilemma... Mozart was Composing at the age of 5... He was a prodigy in his own right, but not in large numbers of multiple disciplines...

3. The rules provide the framework for the rest of the world... Interpretation is crucial to establish teh world as a living breathing entity... without it, you have no verisimilitude..., So I am going to have to disagree with you here...

Character Development is crucial to the long term functionality of a character... a character that never develops other than to assign the Karma to Stats is a very stale character indeed. Never forget that the game is a two way street... It takes Players and Gamemasters to run a successful game...

Just my two here...
Keep the Faith...

Not all shadowrunners are criminal...
...Running the shadows is a quasi-legal "job" [see the proliferation of Spec Ops, mercenaries, undercover police, corporate operatives, private investigators].


Almost all RPGs have a breakdown point, at which the game falls apart.
SR v4 is just being more heavy handed about trying to force characters to fit within a very narrow band.

The fact that SR v4 defines the whole range of ability in a 6-7 number variation is at least a large part of the issue...
...Having the average person at 2, a professional at 3 and the [supposed] max at 7 is just badly done by SR v4.

As you mention, the achievement gradient between professional and maxximum is just unachievable in the context of an RPG, unless you really spend years playing.
Hell, between average and professional should be quite a long time.

In other RPGs with such a limited spread of values, the values mean a lot more - WoD is a good example of this and the values are almost logarithmic is their ability.
Really, the SR v4 devs should not have used those rules without also taking on board the repercussions.
Even HERO values aren't completely linear - every 5 attribute points doubles it's ability, for example.


For some people, just being able to boast about the size of their dicepool is the goal, the whole reason for the character - how effective they are with it, is almost irrelevant.


Totally right - each of us plays differently and wants to have fun in different ways. None are more "right" than any other


Some people are unable to accept challenge and failure, without distorting thing so the chance of success is heavily stacked in their favour [though, anyone with any sense wants the highest chance of success before the attempt something].

If that's the way the group really wants to play, they're optional caps, so play on. My problem is that if people set about intentionally creating characters and situations to drive the rules past the point where they perfom as designed, I don't think they sould be complaining about the fact that things don't work as designed.


I wasn't saying that it was immature to argue diferently than me. I was saying that the argument that "I can do it, so there, deal with it" is inherently immature. Players are not at fault for wanting to be good. But a 20 DP is beyond any reasonable definition of "good" in the universe as written (UAW? I think I'll have to keep that.) I didn't take it at all personally. I just have seen it argued that way far too often (usually by people far less articulate and reasoning than you). If everybody went back and looked at the system the way I laid it out, then I don't see a reason people couldn't be satisfied with a 15 DP, which is enough on AVERAGE to get those 5 Hits to top out the threshold charts. Sure, it's opposed rolls in combat and such, but if the badguys are built to the same ideals by the GM (essentially setting the tone for their players because they don't NEED godsawful Dice Pools to come out ahead) then they don't have to overload everything. IF the GM is running things from their side of the screen per the UAW, then it's the PLAYER'S responsibility not to push the GM by making things so rediculous the GM has no choice but to follow suit. Stating up front that you are putting all three caps in place for skill checks (damage soak and so forth wouldn't apply, so things like the rediculous troll in Heavy Military Armor really IS nigh-impervious to anything man-portabe... this means YOU Stahlseele *grin*) drives home that the GM isn't planning to push things over the top. I play with a group of people who routinely figure out ways to do multi-thouand point damage curves per turn with melee weapons in DnD, but with just the Skill x2 Hit cap in place, we've had some great luck so far, and adding the last two caps would be only a minor change from our perspective, but a couple of the characters who are entirely reliant on gear for their mods would have to change tack just a bit. It's like the thread says in the title: it's all about the attitude of the players.


No reason to not want to get better. But in all things, especially in real life, there is a fundamental limit. Take Michael Phelps. He's probably as close to the 20DP limit as we're ever going to see. His feats in the water literally are the things that inspire stories of adpet powers. He is right up against the ragged edge of the current human performance envelope. Ultimately, it will get to the point in any endeavor where skill, ability, tools and circumstances will become as good as they can get, and the only thing left will be the imponderables and vaguaries of pure chance. Face it, at 20DP, the player can simply say, on any single threshold based test "I buy 5 Hits" and max things out. There HAS to be an upper limit against which to compare your own performance. It's one of the biggest weaknesses with the d20 system: there really are no caps and things get plain stupid eventually. Michael Phelps is always trying to get better, and he's entitled, but I don't think he's going to see too much more, at least dramatically, in the way of improvements in his lifetime.

Not sure I actually agree fully on the first part, but we're in concert on the second.


As you said earlier: "heh"


I went into this above just a second ago. It's not really arbitrary. The Dev's set what they expect to be a realistic maximum performance level in the UAW. I don't consider that "arbitrary" and I backed up that opinion with math showing how the "fluff" matches up with the "crunch" pretty convincingly. But when a sniper takes a shot from a dodging helicopter flying NoE at a moving target at 3000m and gets a head-shot which blows the Troll in Heavy Military Armor away in one hit then turns to the guy next to him and shrugs and says "nah, no biggie" and MEANS it, that's gone beyond fantasy and magic and handwavium technology straight into "bulldrek" as far as I'm concerned. This has nothing to do with starting BP or earned Karma, either. It comes back to Rick Okuda's comment about replicating a starship in Star Trek: "If you could replicate an entire starship at the push of a button, you probably wouldn't really need to."


Omaye, I will merely point out a little event that occured in the Classic Battletech Universe some years ago now (no conincidence it was a F.A.S.A. product at the time, same as Shadowrun) where a certain player, who shall remain un-named, decided to tell Michael Stackpole that he didn't care what he thought, that HE had the right answers about the CBT universe and he (Michael) could go sit and spin. Perhaps I should point out that the player in question fancied themselves the "Kahn of Clan Smoke Jaguar". Well as it turns out, Mike was writing a novel about the Trial of Refusal launched by the Inner Sphere under the command of Victor Davion himself, and he was trying to decide which Crusader faction clan got to "go away". I understand the player received a personally signed copy of the book from Michael. As a spoiler, in case you haven't guessed yet, the Smoke Jaguar clan became the "smoking kitties" and they were wiped out to the last bondsman. I had to tell somebody the other day: "You removed magic from your game. You don't accept the Matrix as depicted. You deleted ESSence as a limit on cyber- and bioware. You're not playing Shadowrun, you're playing the old PC game Syndicate." You're always welcome to tweak things to your own liking, but once you go past a certain point, you leave the Universe As Written and are off entirely on your own. As you stated that you get tired of hearing "You're playing the game wrong because the writers said blah!", I get tired of hearing "I don't care what the fluff says! The RAW states..." If all I cared about were pure mechanics, I'd be sitting in front of my television playing on a console.


I didn't deny cherry-picking. I said I didn't cherry-pick them for their Crunchy Bits^TM. The comparison is a bit of "apples and oranges" because (and I'm not going to quote it AGAIN) the rules clearly state that the traditions as printed are only the most COMMON ways of magic in the 6^th World, and many (even most) magicians have to figure it out as they go along, and provide detailed rules for creation of those "alternate" traditions. It's not side-bar, it's not optional, it's actually listed BEFORE the main two traditions in primary column text. The game designers set out to describe a world with a set of mechanics we can use to reproduce some of the events and occurences from the stories and history of the 6^th World. If you decide that you want to make a sniper who can blow the wings off a gnat flying near the Empire State Building from their lounge chair in Tulsa Oklahoma without even worying about missing, or punch Ghostwalker in the nads and watch him curl up die and then transform into luggage ready for sale with a single punch, that's your business and your table. But even Fastjack and the true Prime Runners get things wrong or screw up a 'run. As for myself, if I have to abide by same limits as the most legendary names in the 6^th World, I'm just shiny with that.

Just because the total NUMBER range is small doesn't mean the outcomes of those numbers don't wind up fitting the situation. Scroll up to my rant a ways up where I analye the way the numbers match the situations in the game. I don't happen to think -,0,1-10 is a narrow range at all.


I tend to generally agree with you on the rest of it, though.

I keep hearing this refrain that high dice pools remove the "challenge" from the game by removing the random element and making characters invincible, but I have never run into either problem. Shadowrun has frequently been described as a game of "eggshells with hammers", where it is extremely easy to get a one-shot kill, but where characters are still vulnerable in turn. This makes it a more tactical game. Characters with high dice pools, if anything, face more challenges, because they run into higher-level/more numerous opposition. I don't make characters with dice pools in the (usually) 16-18 dice pool range because I think it tilts the odds safely in my favor. I simply make logical choices at character creation.

As for the "roleplaying" argument, that's merely the tired old Stormwind fallacy raising its ugly head again. I have played in lots of low-power games, and while they were fun, I didn't find that the lower power level magically increased the roleplaying. Or that higher-end games stifled it. Note that I am just fine with low-powered games; I am fine with nearly any kind of game where the GM states ahead of time what kind of game it will be, and what kind of characters he wants. This works out a lot better than GMs who assume that their take on the game is the default one, and that any player who is not instinctively on the same page as him must be a munchkin.


Synner667, you are right about SR4's skills being too narrow a range for a straight linear progression. That problem is only compounded by rules that make it comparatively easy for characters to improve skills up to that level with a bit of Karma, and fluff that describes differences of one die as if they were huge gulfs of skill, and tends towards excessive hyperbole, especially at the 6 and 7 levels. I think part of the problem is that, for their examples, they use people who have that skill level for numerous skills (such as scientists and special forces). Having an automatics skill of 5 means that you shoot as good as a special forces guy. Which means - you spend time at the firing range, you have been shooting guns for a while, you have shot guns in actual combat situations, you keep cool under fire, you react with combat-trained instincts when using your gun, things like aiming, reloading, and acquiring targets are intuitive to you, and your aim is very accurate. This is plausible for a hard-eyed ex-barrens ganger, ex-corporate expediter, or numerous other concepts. But people read the fluff and get this image of an elite commando in their head, and think, "Well, my guy isn't an elite commando".

Agreed. The creation and improvement of the characters should be a cooperative effort between the characters and the GM. Generally players have control over their characters, but it is the GM's prerogative to exercise control to maintain fun play and keep it within his campaign. As you mentioned below, the system allows characters to accumulate the karma to become the best marksman in the world in a relatively short period of time. The GM can and should put breaks on to keep things in-line with his campaign. Conversely, the GM should also listen to his players and be open to letting them have what they want, within reason.

The story should work in much the same way. The GM mostly creates and runs it, but hopefully he listens to his players and works with them to include possible sub-plots they want and give them a chance to play with certain toys. If a player makes a demo character, at some point he should get to use it. If the GM's campaign revolves around heavy intrigue within a corp or something he can just suggest the player save the demo guy for the next campaign.



Yes, skills are developed over time, in almost all cases. Anyone with an exceptional rating should have a good reason to have it. One of the ways I build my characters is to consider what I want, then think about how the character I envisioned would have ended up that way. The system supports people being complete masters of a subject at start, and I don't think we disagree on that being appropriate. The key is to create a character where it is believable, right?



The rules do provide the framework for the world, as does the fluff. However, over time I've noticed a propensity in people on boards such this one to use their personal interpretation of such to claim other people are doing it "wrong." That is what I was arguing against. If somebody really wants to run a game where someone picks up a gun and becomes a master in 6 months, let 'em. It's their game. The general crunch-character development guidelines we mostly agree on don't have to apply to them. Citing explicit text to lay foundation for the interpretation of a rule is great. Treating the books like holy books and developers like prophets is just silly. They made a system, some it is almost certainly good, and some of it sucks. We can all think of several parts of SR4 that makes us scratch our heads. More importantly, we all paid money for them and we play as a hobby, not as a job. Well, I've heard of a few exceptions to that...

Yes, character development is about the character and the sheet. I hoped that went without saying. Maybe I'm not being clear.

See, the problem is that the people writing the descriptions for the skill levels just arbitrarily decided what each level should be called or described as without even taking 15 minutes to think about what they were saying in terms of the statistics. When it comes down to arbitrary text descriptors versus statistical reality you need to build your character more around statistical reality or else you will have a game where the mechanics won't even work as people expect.

Someone who decides that a game is flawed because nobody wants to take a level of skill that is likely to fail just because of what the arbitrary text description says about that level of skill is probably just looking foward to the power thrill of running a completely arbitrary rule-less ego massage game.

A dice pool of 12 doesn't always fail - but some people think that players should pick a dice pool of 12 over a dice pool of 18, even though a dice pool of 18 is easy to acquire. Hell, a dice pool of 18 even makes sense for a shadowrunner - given the highly specialized and dangerous work that they do on a regular basis, they should resemble special ops a lot more than they resemble security guards. So the matching the fluff argument doesn't really hold water.

The game quality argument - that high dice pools make the game insta-win and discourage roleplaying - doesn't work, either, because I have been in high-powered games where there has been lots of roleplaying, and where I have survived by the skin of my teeth. When it comes to realism, Shadowrun is a game of high-octane action and people who are more than human, so while overall verisimilitude is nice, I expect more of an action movie feel to it.

The game designers' intent argument doesn't impress me, either, because as I mentioned earlier, the game is already chock-full of hard and soft limits. One of the examples of character creation explicitly sets out to make his character as good as possible at shooting things. Yeah, he misses a few tricks, but the point is still that he is still trying to be "the best shooter possible". The vignette at the beginning of the skill section also contrasts a skill monkey with a one-trick pony - both apparently have their niche in the game world.

I think it is counterproductive to attempt guessing a game designer's intentions, especially for something put together by more than one person. But if I did have to take a guess, I would say that their "intention" was to create a game that could accommodate a wide diversity of playing styles. And I would further say that they succeeded. This strength is a potential weakness, though. This is why I think it is so important for GMs to make their expectations for the game clear before it starts.

Dang, this is getting fun.



I agree people shouldn't complain when they break the game. I have to agree with Glyph, though, that the system can support a lot of wear and tear. Theoretical exercises to break the game are just that: theoretical. Anybody who sets out to break the game in-play is really trying to hurt the groups' fun. I'm getting ready to kick somebody from my personal dinner table group for just that. I'm okay with the people posting trying to push things to the ridiculous; it provides a useful guidepost if nothing else. Also, if people agree they are playing with the intent to push the limits, great. More power to them.



UAW. I like. My argument wasn't "I can do it, so there, deal with it." My argument was that GM's are oftentimes afraid of PC's getting good. Whenever somebody trots out the "munchkin" bat, I get nervous. My argument was that if the GM has a bunch of players who like 20 DP games, he should try it.

I'm also curious what about the UAW doesn't support runners taking their jobs seriously and pulling out every toy they can get their hands to have an edge? The mechanics may break at that, but wouldn't you agree that is within the UAW, as you call it?

As for responsibility, I partially agree. It is the responsibility of everyone at the table to communicate and try allow everyone to have fun. I have too often seen GM's whip out restrictions such as these DP-based ones and then beat up on PC's from the safety of the limits. If the GM wants to keep things toned down, he needs to play by the same rules. Hell, it would just be easier to say everyone needs to be on the same page about style. My personal experience has been that a "max-miner" player that intentionally gimps himself in the name of most holy Character Development can be just as disruptive as a min-maxing player. "I need healing." "Okay, you get back three." "THREE!? We are level 6!" "I'm not a power-gamer!"

On the other hand, the innumerable bonuses from gear and situations can bog SR down quite a bit, so imposing those guidelines across the board for everyone is just fine if the table agrees they like it.

I also play with a group that has abused the d20 system to such an extent I'm pretty sure my core set has Battered Game Syndrome. It's fun, but ultimately the math and logistics get tiring. It also puts the GM in the position of either wiping the party completely, or using a Super Soaker to fight a forest fire, with very little room for a normal, challenging game.



In specific, we agree. The system has a definite cap beyond which the characters simply can't improve. What seems to be raising some of this controversy is the fact that it is so easily within reach for a starting character. Using your Michael Phelps example. he probably doesn't have much better than a 16 DP, tops. 7 swimming + 7 Str/Agi/whatever + 2 (maybe) for shaving body hair and wearing a special suit. Of course, very few people in SR will ever have these base stats, and even then only in 1 attribute and one skill.

I think the DP problem doesn't come down to the basics, because that caps fairly easily. It's the bonuses associated with the gear that pushing the DP's into the range you find uncomfortable. The 20 cap is fine, if the table wants it, but now I'm curious about how you implement the crunch limit into the actual game. Why don't people have more mods on their guns or have more armor, or whatever? How do you translate the mechanical limit into something the UAW supports, since that is important to you?

Of course, Magic and Technomancy have to be ignored here simply because they both are unlimited. I guess you could cap total magic pools, but that gets into some odd questions about foci ceasing to function, as well as a hard cap on how many metamagics a mage can acquire.



We can agree to disagree on the objective/subjective nature of appropriate play based on interpreted designer intent. That is itself a matter for GM's and players to work out themselves, and there we are on the same page.




I think my problem here is that the UAW is really the UAI (interpreted.) People have different interpretations and I personally don't see how one person's version is better than any others. For you the amazing sniper shot of awesome violates conventions, heavily I think. For someone else it could be at the high range of acceptable, and for a third it might be "yeah, but where is my 10 foot sword?" You have a degree of respect for the system and its attendant fiction that I don't. The only authority I acknowledge to interpret and use my SR books is my table. I've spent far too much money on far too many systems, and found troll-sized logic holes in almost all of them, to slavishly adhere to the developers' intent, whether that is explicitly stated or cobbled together from an analysis such as yours. You did a fine job on it, btw.

I'm not familiar with Okuda or his comment, but if by that you mean at some point character power reaches a point that it becomes difficult to justify their involvement, I agree. I play another system by WW called Aberrant, in which characters are literally uncapped in their potential. The mechanics supporting that are next-to-useless, but the idea is intriguing. As an example, there is a level 6 (max) power called Universe Creation. The short description reads, "Yes, really." Because we wanted to explore the ramifications of this kind of power, we set out to play a high-powered game. The characters slowly but steadily advanced, and eventually the game got to the point that our fun wasn't derived from rolling dice at all. It became about IF the characters would do something. The mind set and motivation were the important things. The characters also had to go through some real deep soul-searching and Seeking type material to reach their logical conclusion. Eventually, my character essentially became a true god. He could alter reality with the force of his mind. We discovered pretty quick, that even in a game of uncapped advancement with potentially equally powerful adversaries, that the characters weren't motivated. We retired them and called the game. It was fun. If what you are saying is that eventually the power gets in the way of the RP, I agree. I also think different groups have different thresholds for that limit, and as previously stated, I don't really see the need to involve developer opinion in that.



Why aren't they playing SR? They are certainly playing their own version of it, but it isn't any more or less SR than any other game played anywhere else. There will be challenges with their approach, because the fluff and setting material involves that stuff a great deal. There will also be rules conundrums that come up as a result, and the group will have to tackle them. It's their game.

I'm not arguing that the crunch over-rides fluff. I'm saying that the desire of the table for a fun game over-rides everything: fluff, crunch, designer interviews, and the kitchen sink. Of course people can use the RAW and hold it over the fluff. It's their game. They can also hold the fluff over the RAW; it's their game. I think the issue here is that you have your interpretation of the fluff-crunch relationship. That is fine, but other people may not agree with it.

You get tired of the RAW dogs, so do I. Having rules discussions and theoretical exercises is helpful, to a point. Conversely, I am tired of Fluff dogs who try to use the material to claim supremacy over the "proper" way to play a GAME.



Let me try to parse this out. When I said cherry-pick, I meant picking spirits for their crunchy bits. People around here have said you did that. You say it's for your character, not for the crunchy bits. Great, I agree with you. You are completely right that the rules support people inventing Traditions as a main-stream part of the game.

I haven't ever said that the players should get to a point where they can accomplish the feats you listed, though I got a got a hankering for some old-school Prime Runner with dragon luggage, thanks. : ) In fact, I don't know they could get to those feats.

You have given yourself permission to make a character with some mechanically beneficial choices. Why are you so unwilling to give others that same leeway? They want "the world's best sniper." Why is that any better or worse than your idea?

To ask a broader question, what is so wrong with playing the game as a mechanical exercise(I don't, for my part)? If a group of people enjoys trying to push the limits of the system (and from the activity around here I daresay many do) what makes your way better? You may not have said it, but your posts clearly imply "munchkins" are doing something wrong, and that you aren't. Why?

Thanks Synner667...

I guess that there is really no more to say on the subject, everyone will play their own game and have fun, and I am okay with that... I appreciate the discussion to this point, and hope that I have not upset too many people...

Keep the Faith