First: Keep in mind that I haven't played SR3 in... a long freaking time, like, atleast a decade. When I started, there was no Dumpshock, but there was a Deep Resonance board, and we posted all sorts of crazy stuff. That's a long time ago, and I don't have eidetic memory, so I can't recall everything. My copy of SR3, if I still own it, is packed up somewhere, and I'm not going to dig it out just to argue about specific rules interactions. I can, however, recall enough that there were glaring, massive problems with that rules set, and I have no interest to go back to it, especially after playing other games that have much better mechanics.


If everyone has a smartlink, then what's the point? Obviously not everyone is cybered: in 20+ years of playing this game and reading supplements, it's pretty obvious that most people do not have cyberware more invasive than a datajack, eyes and a few other minor mods. If everyone doesn't have a smartlink, then the difference between the haves and the have nots is pronounced. And that difference is massive: reducing a TN of 4 or 5 to 2 or 3 isn't just a small boost, it's a dramatic one: A TN of two means you have rougly an 85% chance of a hit per die you roll, compared to a 50% or 33% chance, that's almost twice as effective as without it. Yes, smartlinks are awesome, but I don't think they should be THAT awesome, or everyone would have an implant for them. Which virtually every non awakened one did(And I've played gun adepts where losing a full point of magic rating and the two extra dice on skills was offset by the smart link) as a PC. The difference between augmented and non augmented characters was clear as day: I've played SR3 characters who were Skills and Attributes heavy, but without the resources for extensive augmentation. Everyone hated that when we went on a Mr. White run(you never win with Mr. White).

Now, moving along: Using SR4 to compare to SR3 isn't my arguement. You wanna erect that strawman and tilt at windmills? Go right ahead. But that's not what I'm saying. I am saying that I prefered some SR4 mechanics(Hacking and rigging being more accessible, for example) over their SR5 incarnations. I'm not happy with SR5's return to the old psuedo class system. However, the fixed TNs, large dice pools, and unified mechanics are fairly robust, and they work for gaming out being a shadowrunner. They work enough that I don't just break out GURPS and do a cyberpunk game there. SR5's limits help to deal with dice pool inflation: if you have an Acc 5 gun, then throwing 24 dice(which is pretty hefty and implies a very high skill, high attributes, and numerous positive modifiers to your dice pool) isn't that big of a deal. You can be the best pistol slinger in the world, but if you pick up a crappy, low-end gun, you're going to be limited by your hardware. I like that.

Now, regarding dice pools: While I see some big dice pools from time to time, the truth is that a starting character really can't have so many dice that enviromental modifiers are not a real consideration. I mean, what, the best you're gonna get is around 16 dice for firearms, because you can't take Aptitude AND exceptional attribute at the same time. Well, I guess you could get muscle toners for more Agility. But that doesn't allow you to "ignore" enviromental factors, and those add up quick. Light rain and partial light, target in cover, and you could be looking at a -5 or -7 dicepool modifier. Sure, if you're some kind of hyper specialized gunslinger, you can eat that and still have 12 or 13 dice. But you paid through the nose to be that specialized.

Also, this argument that PCs should be handicapped, while NPCs should not... well, it smacks of gamism. If it's foggy and partially lit, that modifier is going to apply to all the involved parties, not just the combat pool 9 characters. And who is better able to eat that modifier, the PC who reduces the penalties to -1 or 0, and has a -2 smartlink, or the unaugmented security guards? In addition, not having a two-page chart of modifiers is both simpler, and more fluid to work with. At first, SR5's enviromental penalties seemed a bit cludgy and confusing. In practice, it works pretty well, and we don't spend a lot of time constantly flipping through the book to the modifier table(which is still pretty big).

Continuing with this whole "Tactics vs. strategy" thing: let's say you're pulled over for a routine traffic stop(say some tusker kid threw a rock and knocked out your tail lights*). The streetsam with restricted cyberware, grenades, and illegal guns decides to "fix" the problem by shooting the cops. Let's say neither party is surprised(The cops halfway expect a traffic stop to result in gun fire, the runners expect to shoot, etc), and combat starts. The augmented street same is probably looking at something like 8+3d6 initiative, or multiple passes and going first, while the cops are going to only act once, and probably be last on the draw. There's no "tactical" decision there, you simply go before them and hose'em. Oh, and with something like 8 to 9 armor as a matter of course, the street sam can just stand in the open, because he's throwing 12 or 13 dice to resist damage against a TN of 2, so even if you hit him, that pistol isn't going to do squat. Even when the SWAT team shows up, they end up having problems with the brick. Further, while combat pool might seem like a tactical deal, it was not: your combat pool was decided at character generation, and it's uses(bolstering offense, or morei mportantly, keeping you alive) didn't change based on whether or not you used good tactics. Hiding behind a corner didn't give you a bonus to combat pool, and walking like a terminator with your gun at your hip, spitting hot death didn't disadvantage you.

So you had combats that were either entirely lopsided(Augmented vs. non augmented, Augmented rolls the opposition unless very disadvantaged by environment and numbers) or became stalemates(equally matched, and good tactical decisions on both sides) and drawn out. Whether or not that is realistic(most gunfights/combat situations are generally one-sided and resolved quickly, or turn into drawn out bloody affairs), it's not fun. It's tedious and bogs down the game, to the point that you didn't want to run too many combats, or you'd spend a session running one combat at a damn time. Again, not fun.

It's not the same these days. Even a routine traffic stop can turn very lethal. Those Cops have a professional rating of 3, which gives them three edge. One cop can Blitz or Sieze the Initative so that he's not flat-flooted and can actually do some things, they can toss edge as a bonus into their dice pools, and generally they can be a pain in the ass. Now, in all fairness, the PCs will probably be victorious, but they gotta work a little bit more for it, and it's not a given that the Street Sam will automatically go first and act before the cops can respond.

Now, back to hating floating TNs? Yeah, I do, because of things like Sustaining spells. For three editions, a wizard sustaining a spell and or astrally percieving was pretty much uncapable of of doing anything. A simple +2 modifier made everything much, much harder(TN 4 is about a 50% chance of succes per die, TN 6 is a 16% chance of success) to do. Now, there were tricks around it(spirits and quickening), while reducing a dice pool of 10 to 8 is a much smaller decrease in effectiveness. So you didn't have a lot of sustained spells being used, unless that was all you were going to do. Which... didn't match the fluff at all.

Again, getting tagged with a lucky AR burst in SR3 for a 11S wound wasn't that big of a deal: you only need to get 6 success to stage it down to nothing, if the combat pool dice didn't evade the hit outright, and with armor 8 or 9, you could soak that all day long. Which lead to increasingly bizarre things, like Lonestar carrying a gun that fired faster than physically possible to "penetrate armor" by allowing no penalty bursts. Silly.

I've rebuilt Meat/Jolly Roger and played him in SR3, SR4 and SR5. In SR3, Meat has around 11-12+ dice for damage resistence and an Armor value of something like 8/5(Armored vest /w armored jacket layered over, titanium bone lacing, and maybe other cyberware. He was a freakin' cybermonster) when walking around on the street, higher when he geared up for violent runs. IF you weren't packing APDS, you were not hurting him(the one time he was really taken down, the shooters used stun ammo to get around his stupid high ballistic armor, and he still soaked a lot of bursts and killed a few guys before going down). In SR5, he'd have something like a 23-24 dice pool to soak. Against a pistol, he's throwing 23 dice against a DV of 7 or 8, which means he can eat a pistol round to the chest pretty well. Against an AR, he's looking at 22 dice, and something like 10 or 11 hits he needs to completely soak that damage.

Also, since those average guys are now throwing 7 or 8 dice on a test, rather than 3, they're more likely to get more hits, stage the damage up more, and prevent him from dodging. That's pretty sweet. It means that Meat isn't a juggernaut anymore, and he doesn't just wade through automatic weapons fire, with his AS-7 spitting hot flechette death. Sure, he won't take but a box or two of damage at a time, but that still means he's gonna go down if he tries to go full terminator.

What I'm seeing in SR5 is that "good" combat characters are throwing around 10-12 dice at char gen for their attacks, and regular "mooks" are throwing around 6 to 7. The PCs do outclass them, but not nearly as much as before when you saw Skill 5 and 6 people(with -2 to their TNs) vs 3s and 4s(Tns of 4 or 5). In SR3, regular runners could generally pull off 4 or 5 hits on a mook, while the mooks were lucky to get a hit or two. Addint enviromental modifiers into that, and the SR3 mooks just can't compete.


*This couldn't happen with the damage rules for vehicles, but whatever

Whatever man, but don't complain if I correct most of your irrational claims about those poor mechanics. You can recall enough, but you're quoting 9 as a difficult TN, and that the smartling is a problem and so on. One issue was a problem with players who don't like to have high stats and fail some test, the second is probably one of the less quoted issue people had with SR3.

So now:

1 - The point of smartlink if everybody has one? Your very argument is that not everybody does. Yes, most non awakened PC has one. The point is that NPC didn't, and that shadowrunners are not described as Joe Average. That's as simple as it goes. You'll call me strawman, but the direct corollary of your point is that it's strange most non awakened PC have cyber or bioware while cyberware is supposed to be rare. 2nd, smartlink are not awesome. Smartgoggles gives you 1 point, laser point gives you 1 point. At long range, optical 2 or 3 is as good. It's mostly sensible that not everyone has one.

2 - About the so called straw man: I'm answering your post about how SR3 is not tactical which answered Cain's post about how SR3 was tactical and SR4 strategic. I tried to describe it more precisely for you because you missed the point, and expanding on Cain's post I quoted SR4. Is it clear?

3 - About SR4 dice pool: the 13 pool guy will make the shot reliably at extreme range in light rain running. He's still got 3 dice by my count. Now say it's actually heavy rain, and he's lightly stun, and he won't make the shot, ever. Cover applies to the target reaction. If target doesn't know (hey, it's extreme range), he will always get wounded.

4 - When talking about the conditions that don't apply to both parties in a SR3 fight, I'm talking about conditions that don't apply to both. So of course, rain will affect both. Cover won't. Running won't. staying immobile in the middle of the street spraying the opposition won't. Plus of course, not everyone has the same eyes.

I think I'll just stop arguing there. Strawman accusation are beginning, that's indicative it's time to leave it, I've already claimed that SR3 had stupid outcomes more than necessary, and my point was that the floating TN and tactical pools had nothing to do with it. The 9 ballistic guy is a problem because 9 ballistic is possible, not because floating TN. I'll just add 3 things before:
- The streetsam with maxed out reflexes, awesome guns and tons of ballistic armor will indeed make short work of two cops on patrol. It's hard to get how it's a problem, though. Some people or he at some point invested hundreds of thousands of nuyens for him to be a war machine.
- Getting tagged with a 11S AR burst with 6 successes because you were stupidly standing in the middle of the street and this skill 4 assault rifle guy spent his combat pool meant you had to make 12 successes to stage it down to nothing. And then the guy shoots a second time. And your dodge TN is at 5 on first birst, 6 on second.
- You missed the point about tactical pools. Their tactical aspect is that you decide when and how you want to spend them. That's tactical. By the very definition of tactical.

And finally, I don't care about your build. Hitting the search function will show you 10s of easily tweaked out SR4 or 5 sams that can soak anything. Have fun!

Sustaining Foci were already known in SR3 ... and the +2 to TN while astrally perceiving were only for mundane things, not for magical actions. So a sustaining mage was perfectly fine while astrally perceiving if he just was a little bit careful.

SYL

Ok, first off, I suggest that if you want to enjoy a nuanced conversation or lively debate with somebody, don't focus on one line of their position and dismiss it as "irrational". My dislikes for SR3, as comapred to SR 4 and now SR5, are not irrational, and in fact have rational basis(poor versimulitude with real-world things such as guns, a poor mechanic that didn't really explain how regular people did anything, etc). Dismissing my complaints as "irrational" by the second post, and focusing entirely on that? Also, using pejoratives such as "haters" is not really a good way to go. That's not how you start a friendly debate. Just letting you know, for future reference. Now, on the other hand, if you wanna play dirty pool, we can do that too, teacup. But don't start firing off pejoratives, then start crying when people point out your straw man arguments.

So now:



No, the point I was making is that joe-average with a smart link(a cybernetic one, not the glorified laser sight goggles) and 3 or 4 in a firearms skill is as good, if not better than a "World Class" skill of 6. And that's true: a TN of 2 gives you an 85% or so chance of each die being a success. So 4 dice turns into 3 success easy, while 6 dice on a TN of 4 turns into 3 successes. And anyone Skill 6 or better is supposed to be in the top level of that skill, the kind of person people talk about when discussing that skill. And for TN 3 vs TN 5, that's 2.64 successes compared to 1.98. For TN 7 vs TN 9 that's like .98 success compared to .48. Strange to me that a "professional" level of shooting(what I would expect for infantrymen) with a cheap, readily available augmentation is superior to "world class" skill with shooting. This creates a big problem with suspension of disbelief: It's hard for me to not be incredulous that smartlinks are not ubiquitous items in the 6th world, considering the amazing boost they provide.

While in SR4, those skill levels did not change that much, but the dice pools got bigger. But a smartlink only provides an additional 2 dice to the pool, which is less than a net success for your trouble. It's still something you should take, but it doesn't make "average" shooters outperform world class marksmen. An Agi 4, Skill 4 guy with a smartlink is on par with, not superior to an agi 4, skill 6 guy without.




Again, I'm not defending SR4 as the "superior" edition. I'm saying that, despite almost a decade with SR2 and SR3 rules, I have no particular attachment to them, and infact, have several problems with them. I believe that SR4 was a great step in the right direction, if poorly implemented, and it did wonders for things that have been problems for almost 20 damned years in the system. Sr5 is an even more refined edition, and while I absolutely LOATH some of the regressions(see riggers and hackers), over-all I consider it an outright better system than SR3.

And no, SR3 was not "tactical", because once you "bought in" to a particular level of competence, you were so far above "regular" people that they stopped being a threat. Again, this isn't just "irrational" "hate", but the experience of over 15 years of playing this game.




Hey, buttercup, i'm NOT TALKING ABOUT SR4. Talking about SR5. Applying my arguments to SR4 will result in confusion.




How do you take cover if you're surprised, or simply incapable of acting before the opponents? How do you run when you're already dead? Two cops in a squad car is a chump encounter for anyone augmented. In SR4 and SR5, getting the "drop"(in this case, acting before them in initiative) is not guaranteed against unaugmented opponents. So those cops might go before you, they might make multiple actions, allowing them to get into cover and take advantage of those tactical options, that otherwise they couldn't in SR3. So, you know, there is that. So it's not an automatic that my Init 8+3d6 guy is gonna go before those Init 7+1d6 cops. They might get the drop on me, and there's no way I can stop that.



Don't call people irrational or haters, then cry about them pointing out your weak arguments. If you wanna dish out the punishment, then be prepared to accept the punishment. Also, don't fixate on one line of an argument, while ignoring every other complaint.



Except that in SR4 and SR5, it's not a foregone conclussion. Those cops could get the first shot, they could be throwing 10+ dice on that shot, and it doesn't matter how much 'ware you have, a lowly punk cop can put you in the ground.



Lol. Ok, so an Agi(or was it still Quickness back then? Can't really remember, been a long time) 4, INT 3, Will 3 guy had what, 5 combat pool? Throwing 9 dice at TN4(or more, because, ya know, low light, glare, rain, mist, fog, chaotic world, injuries, whatever. Oh, Recoil too.) gets you around 4 to 5 successes on average, not six. And when I'm throwing 13+ dice, with a TN of 2, yeah, I can expect around 11 successes to stage that down. And couldn't you roll combat pool on your soak test, or was it only for dodging? Because I seem to remember that you could use it to soak, not just dodge.



You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

But my issue with Combat Pool was not that it allowed tactical decisions or required them, but that the mechanics of the rule meant that if you wanted to be good at combat, you had a very particular build, and that the attributes most associated with that build were generally most associated with Magicians and Deckers, rather than Street Sams.





Man. Is this how far Dumpshock has fallen? Really?

Sustaining foci, which I forgot to mention, were great. Bust they cost karma to bond, and the lower force ones were real easy to disbind/disenchant.

When SR4 dropped, I was able to run the street mage pre-genned character(though I swapped out spells), and not only turn myself invisible and levitate, but also be able to still cast magic fingers, mind probe and summon spirits. That was not possible without exceptional luck and specialization in SR1-3. Improvement says i.

Disenchanting/disbinding during combat and the Karma cost were quite low in SR3. S-Foci were a pretty good and safe way to sustain multiple spells on you. I am sure you still remember the force 1 sustaining foci with improved reflexes so that the mage had the same initiative as the street sam.



Levitation, spirit summoning, mind probe and magic fingers were already part of SR3 and could be done from the start.

In other ways the SR4 mage was nerfed (no magic immunity after some initiation grades with shielding, mor skills to cover, not simply summoning and sorcery, no free spells for 0 Karma because you performed a metaquest or used the spells exclusively, mnemoenhancer, no almost-none-reduction of magical might you you cybered up, no SnS ammunition to instantly disrupt spirits, cheaper skill increase), in others they ways they were buffed in SR (spirit tool box).

But of course everything pales against the SR1/2 mages with insta-all-metamagic.

SYL

I do remember the force 1 sustaining foci. And I remember getting them blown up in various ways at various times.




But there was no way you were going to cast Magic fingers, mind probe, summon, or use an attack spell, while invisible AND levitating, without messing about with foci.



Fair enough, it changed. Change isn't always bad.

And, as we all know. The more things change... the more the stay the same.

On a rule basis? Granted, my SR3 times is long gone (around 10 years ...) but I do not remember that it was easy to attack foci, especially with masking, a very common initiate power (usually the first one a player mage took).



Of course not. But sustaining foci were cheap (in Karma and Nuyen, depening on our starting ressources and/or nuyen rewards during play (of course, an extreme low power group without any monetary rewards to get more than squatter monthly would have massive issues getting sustaining foci in the first place - but then again SR23 tended to get way more money compared SR4 (subjective experience)). And don´t forget focused concentration, something missing in SR4 as well (focused concentration gives you now drain dices). Compared to SR3 sustained foci feel more expensive due to higher investments since the force now plays a role.

And of course: you would not do that in SR4 as well with -8 on your tests-

I still remember how painful it was when my mage cybered up the first time in SR4, and ALL dice pools went down. In SR3? After some initiations granting free mmagic points? I lost 2 or 3 essence for some really nice upgrades and still lost only 1 pool dice IIRC.

SYL

A force 1 foci could easily get destroyed when pressed against an astral barrier, typically if his owner was not astrally perceiving when passing through. It could be targeted by a mana spell, which had to do deadly physical damages to break it, but benefited from spell defense in this case. It could be attacked in astral combat too, but it took at least two complex actions to break it, so the owner could always shut it down before it was destroyed. All in all, it was not so easy to break even a force 1 focus, but it was not improbable to see it happen.

Yeah, thought so. Masking + astral perception (and a certain knowledge on how magical security is done) = a lot of surviving foci.

SYL

My knowledge of the rules is about the same as yours, so I am remembering decades old information, but there is a difference between begin able to Levitate, be Invisible, and still do magic tasks without requiring anything extra.

which is useful if you get shotup with stun rounds, wake up with a hood on you and you are buck naked with none of your foci. An SR4 and SR5 magician can still sustain multiple spells and do things, while an SR3 or SR2, or SR1 mage cannot do that without the benefit of a focus. Sure, it's easy to do, easy to maintain, but it did create a vulnerability that presently doesn't exist. And it cost Karma, which isn't to be ignored.

I remember reading the intro story to Queen Euphoria, reading about how the Coyote shammn cast armor to harden his fists and punch through the glass of his crashed plane, and I remember thinking: "Man.. unless he was intiated with centering, there's no way he is doing that". And, ya know? I was right. He wasn't an iniatiate, he didn't have centering or any other metamagics, yet the fiction describes him as doing something that wasn't possible by the rules.

There's a whole host of that.

I thought you were done, man? I mean, you are responding to a quote someone asked of me. I thought you were done with this conversation, because it got too "hot" when I pointed out your weak arguments.

C'mon man. I'm irrational and a hater, man. So why don't you respond to me, instead of continuing the debate through proxy?

In addition to the floating TNs, which I hate, I also give you that representations of firearms and the interaction between fleshy characters and vehicles were flawed and didn't work well. They were problematic, for a variety of reasons(learned over a decade of playing SR2 and SR3), and you don't offer any rebuttal to those points. Why not? I mean, I get it, I'm irrational and a hater, but why are these other glaring, obvious flaws of the SR3 ruleset not addressed?

A normal starting SR4 mage with perhaps 10-15 dices (depending on build, rule abuse, mentor spirit etc) will not do major magic with -8 on all his magic tests (for sustaining levitation, invisibility mind probe and magic fingers at the same time, as per your example). In that case, naked or not, he is almost as vulnerable as the mage from other editions. In some cases it was even easier in SR3 due to the focused concentration edge (which was changed in SR4), as in your case the mage would only rececive +4 to his TNs and not +8.

Both would need a certain amount of dice luck in that case - the SR4 mage usually less than the SR3 mage, granted.

As we begin to circle around the same arguments, I am ending my part here.

SYL

Just remember, its only like my opinion man. Everyone has one, and they all stink.

I do appreciate that you remained civil with me(its not an easy task), and remember: there is no badwrongfun way to play this game.

Except for being a vampire. That's just wrong.

Sure they are bloodsucking leeches preying on mankind and hiding in the shadows as the pure light of day burns them.

But still better than being a lawyer.

SuingRun™

Injured in a shadowrun and it wasn't your fault?

Did a drunken streetdoc attach/remove the wrong limb?

Are you feeling Discriminated Against/Hunted for a Bounty due to Metavariance/Species/Magical Tradition or Infection?

Are your partners mind probing you even as we speak?

Now's your chance to let our crack legal team bring justice (for a price) by sticking it to them in court.



No case is too big, no fee is too big.

Reminds me of "Krakatoa", my Hawai'ian Troll Adept Lawyer
If You attack him, he not only can beat You to a Pulp, but he can also sue You for Attacking him


I'm really toying with the thought of creating a Nocturnal Banshee Mage (specialised in Summoning and binding Spirits and with CHA 8 )

with an offtopic Dance
Medicineman

Jeez, some people are getting angry here

You know how it is... Once people bring out the Infected, then the Pitchforks and Fire are shortly to follow.

And if you act now we will throw in one (1) Free Torch with every three (3) Memory Metal Pitchforks purchased.

Ask us about our Bulk Mob Rates today......

so I haven't gotten Lockdown yet, and while it might make good reading material, I'll be running of irl to a summer practicum out of the country for 3 months and probably won't have alot of time/access to get the new stuff, still I wondered what people thought of it, and the direction of the CFD "evil bad nano" route.

I've sorta realized my discomfort stems from an odd parallel I've drawn, likely not intended, but given my line of work in the health/mental health field, it almost comes across like early HIV/AIDS scare stuff. where you have a population that oooooh scary can look like you, but actually unlike vamps and ghouls, which are obvious, are secret infectors whose fluids and contact can cause YOU to get infected too. If you're not augmented you can still be in trouble if the evil uncontrollable CFD lurker can inject you with their goo. And if you're augmented, watch out for toilet seats that can infect your cyberlegs!

There's a review in the pinned Lockdown thread, I think.

A well thought-out, non-bashing review, at that. I still doubt I will pick it up - I don't like the railroady feeling of "You are all trapped in this area now", the infection angle has problems (characters basically get ruined or killed by GM fiat, sounds like), and the whole "nanoware doesn't work now" thing makes me feel like leaving this offering to the grognards who wanted it to go away. That, and this has been done already with bug spirits and shedim. I'm kind of spitefully glad that cyberware suites sound utterly useless, because I hate it when they stick these bits of gear in adventure/setting books, instead of the crunch books where they belong.

I've realized that part of my discomfort stems from 'being caught in tow' with the ongoing narrative. I've had a chance to catch up on the 4th edition stuff, and some of the 5th edition missions and source material now, and I'm getting this sense of "here's the story, what you players do is pretty irrelevant because we have it planned out." Its easier to see in hindsight, the missions give the illusion of player choice and contribution to world narrative, but then GMs would potentially have to retcon player stuff to fit into the source material that comes out a few months later. Or they have to go further off track, in which case the new sourcebook can be a little difficult to reconcile.

Now, this isn't anything new. Many games and genres do it. In a sense it makes sense for the SR setting, the idea of "Frak you peon, megas and dragons and the like always win out." I feel it kind of lends to a decision point: Do you want to participate in published missions/story and accept that you (as a player, and character) have no impact whatsoever, because the devs/story is decided before you even get involved. or do you ignore the published stuff and come up with your own because then your players will be less impacted by discordant background source changes in the world?

Yeah, that's why for me, it's always been crunch > setting books > adventures. The setting books are good for general details, but I will tend to gloss over or ignore the more specific bits - if I want Lord Torgo to still be around, or for the Tir insurrection to fail, or think a gang war would be great even though it is set ten years before/later in the timeline, then I will diverge from canon. The adventures, I prefer to come up with on my own, but they can still be mined for NPCs and story ideas.

There's a lot of that in RPG fiction, period. D&D is loaded with that sort of thing, for example. FASA did it a lot, with Battletech: the "Stackpole Maneuver" didn't actually exist until after Stackpole made it up, then rules were eventually retconned in. SR1-3 is no different in that area.


Well, thing is, players like feeling that their characters are important. They like being able to affect the outcome of events, hence the popularity of metaplot games in the 90's. So, if you can empower the players in this fashion, it's a good thing.

But, not all player groups will agree on what should happen. So, what happened was some groups basically got to decide the outcome of events, and whatever other players did became irrelevent. This was the case with White Wolf, for example. SR2 actually made a good attempt to get player input in one case: people who bought the Super Tuesday book got ballots to vote for the next UCAS president. Problem was, they only got like five ballots back.

So, things went back to the developers, who stopped listening. They figured if players didn't care, they didn't deserve input. Some companies have come back around, using the internet to collect data in a better fashion. Others are still stuck in the 90's, and just do whatever they think is best.

In my case... I try and resolve this by putting together really big, game-changing events as the result of a campaign, not the cause. So, once the world-shaking is over, the characters are about ready to retire anyway. If I have to reset, then we start with new characters, in a modified timeline. If my old players want to see what happened, I either tell them it's hush-hush, and their new characters don't know (yet), or they'll discover the changes as the new campaign goes on.

Reminds me that someone out there took Pathfinder's Reign of Winter adventure setting and went, "Ok, what happens if the players fail each one? Fail all of them? Awesome. Here, have some more adventure plots."
(I think one of the failures leads to a major city being hit with an asteroid)

Wow, I guess you could say they ended up between a rock and a hard place.

(•_•)

( •_•) ⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

Yeaaaahhhhh

Well, it can be mitigated by adventures (or fluff books, for that matter) only giving hard info up to a certain point, until the subject is revisited a few years later in another book.
Like, take the technomancer trouble in Geneva. It's mentioned in... what was it?.. Runner Havens?.. and then GMs are left to do with it what they will, until an edition later it comes up again.

Heh pathfinder. If you do the Drow series, a potential failure is also "Rock falls from sky, everyone dies." I also liked the Demon (devil?) one with the Worldwound, where you basically got invasion. It was like...Warhammer 40k setting if you wanted it