My inclination is definitely on the 'resourcefulness' side of things, representing the character's ability to dig deep down inside himself when the effluence hits the propeller and pull off something he didn't even know he was capable of.

However, Edge is often touted as the 'luck' attribute and the Hand of God application explicitly allows for coincidence and 'divine intervention', so I'm posting this idea for thoughts and as a suggestion that others may like (without any intention (yet) of using it myself).

What if Edge were considered to be entirely luck-themed?
I.e. A high Edge rating indicates a character who is noticably luckier than average.

With this ideology, its applications could transcend those given in the book to situations outside individual tests.

Case Study:
The party are fleeing the scene of a crime and heavy corpsec is in hot pursuit. The rigger's incapacitated, the terrain is unfavourable or they're just brutally outclassed and it's only halfway through the adventure. They still have some Edge between them, so they appeal to the GM for a lucky break. A roll is made against an arbitrary threshold and a speeding truck takes out the lead pursuant (threshold met), nothing happens (threshold missed) or the team has to swerve to avoid a pedestrian and incur a penalised crash test (critical glitch).

This would need some specifics:
- Would the driver need to spend the Edge or would everyone involved have to contribute a point and they roll the lowest/average/highest/total Edge rating? [I'd say everyone rolls their own and use the highest no. of hits scored, but an individual standard/critical glitch is an overall standard/critical glitch]
- Should the players request a specific outcome they'd like to happen with the GM deciding how (un)likely it would be, or should the GM decide on something he would be happy to have happen and give it a reasonable threshold? [I'd say GM decides the specifics]
- Should it be left to the GM to offer it rather than allow players to request it? [I'd say no]
- Is the Edge burned? [I'd say no]
- Could NPCs do the same? [I'd say definitely as long as the players knew the result wasn't just GM fiat]

PROs – Adds flavour and is potentially a more satisfying solution to anti-climax situations than GM fiat.
CONs – As an attribute Edge is more suited to the 'resourcefulness' theme and there are already far too many applications for it (IMO). Also, it could lead to luck-dependant teams who ask for it more than once or twice a game, thus impairing the RP aspect.

As I said, I don't think this is for my game but it could be good for others and I'd like to see what people think. So what do you reckon?

Usually Edge is an individual Luck/Desperate Act test imho but in the case of "Team Luck/ Random Chance" I would use the following:

One character uses Edge and the team can add +1 per member for teamwork edge test - and they must all spend one point of edge.

WELL... we could get completely metaphysical and weirdly esoteric here... and we will (since yeah... MAGIC, a wizard did it)

Let us just define Edge as the personal "Tao". So it is like this: IF you are in-tune with your own place in the universe, if you are perfectly yourself, the will universe help you out by fixing itself to "make it right" for you. (But this is not favourism since you, your enemy and the universe is the same)

So i think it makes perfect sense to have Edge containing elements of both your own will and ability AND external force. Since you yourself grant yourself a higher importance (or just a different role) in life throught the perception of individuality and willpower. (Question is of course... WHY can a Pixie and a human have more than others then? DAMMIT)

I think somehwere i just may have killed a wise monk with this... sorry man.

Good point, forgot about that.

The fluff is that the modern world was built by humans for humans and so they have a slightly easier time in an esoteric manner – humans suffer from minute and invisible complications slightly less than other species. On the mechanical level it's to make humans less vanilla in the stat boxes.

Taking that into account makes using Edge as a luck attribute even less satisfactory, but wait ...

Pixies get an Edge bonus too, which is odd because it stands to reason that they would have more trouble than most non-humans in a world built for creatures between five and six feet in height. So it's definitely implied that Edge is (at least in part) a mystical benevolence (aka luck).

In my games, Edge is more akin to luck than resourcefulness. Actually, i roll it for things i haven't directly described, but were left in the open and could benefit the players.

For an example, last Run, a player fell two floors down over a garden, while the place almost being observed by a patrol drone. He asked me if there was any cover nearby. I never said it hadn't, but never described it there was or not a hedge nearby. I asked him to roll edge to see if Fate gave him a hand, and so it happened.

I also measure who is most unlucky through edge. If there is a sniper on an alley, the mage of the group cannot be imediately identified, and everyone failed their perception tests, i roll edge to see whose brain is going to be splattered over the pavement. No favouritism in my table!

I've always considered edge to be something like a lucky break, but something a whole lot more subtle than having a truck crashing into your pursuers. No one, not even Mr. Lucky, is that much beloved by the universe. If you look at the applications of edge, helping rolls, cancelling glitches, giving extra IPs, giving top Initiative, it's more like accidentally shooting an artery, or noticing that banana peel just in time to not fall flat on your face. Those could be counted as resourcefullness or luck, but if it is luck, it's much more personal than global. It's the kind of luck that helps you pick the winning lotto numbers, not that gets your name picked any more often in a random raffle if that makes any sense. Any way, that's my 2 cents.

Yeah, right...
Go tell this to CTM and his 3 points of burn edge to live

Death is always a choice, Shinobi. LOL.

At my table, it's often used as a measure of luck. For example, if a player is looking for a medical kit, but nobody actively stated that they packed, an edge roll gives the player a chance to find a medkit with rating being equal to number of successes.

I mostly think of Edge as a combination of resourcefulness and opportunism.

Resourcefulness is all about taking what you've got and getting the job done with it; this is where the extra dice, rerolls, and things like that come in--those things are the character coming up with a way to MacGyver a solution, or catching a critical mistake at the last moment and fixing it. Maybe your gunner managed to ricochet a shot into a weak spot in the target's armor, or your hacker caught a typo (or equivalent) just before sending a command.

Opportunism is more luck-related. Sometimes the universe offers you a break, but if you don't notice it and take advantage of it, it doesn't necessarily do you any good. I prefer Hand of God moments to be a combination of a lucky break combined with a quick response--someone opens a nearby security door as the hit squad opens fire, and the character dives through it, gaining just enough cover to survive. The character didn't have time to pick/hack the lock or break down the door, he was just lucky that someone happened to want to go through it at the right moment, and he made the most of the opportunity. It's sort of like invoking the Feng Shui rules briefly--make up something that luck makes available, and use it dramatically.

Humans have an advantage because, as you pointed out, SR civilization is built around humans. Things tend to be in sizes they're comfortable with, they generally stand out less, things like that. Doorways are mostly a comfortable size for them to dive through (where a troll would have to duck/squeeze, say), switches are at convenient heights, and so forth. That makes it a little easier for them to capitalize on lucky breaks when they turn up.

Pixies, on the other hand, spend their entire lives coping with a giant world. Logically, this would require them to become relatively resourceful just to get through the day. On the opportunism side of things, their size and mobility can offer them opportunities that just aren't available to others--they can reach, get through, or hide in places that others couldn't.

So, essentially, humans get extra Edge for the world being adapted to them. Pixies get it for being conditioned to adapt to the world.

What you're referring to is a Drama Point system, which SR4.5 isn't meant to support. You can kinda shoehorn Edge into this role, but allowing Edge to dictate story elements makes high-Edge characters even more stupidly powerful than before.

Since I was a bit vague on what Drama Points are, basically they're a mechanism by which the players get to dictate what happens in the story, instead of the GM. For example, instead of asking: "Is there a dumpster I can hide behind?", you spend a Drama Point, and *poof!* there's a dumpster. You can do this to just show off (which is what a Critical Success in 4.5 does, essentially) or you can do this as part of a setup for a cool action. Last week in my Serenity game, I spent a Drama Point to say there were aluminum cans and rusty nails lying about, which I promptly turned into thermite.

The problem here is that SR4.5 goes for gamist dark and gritty, while most Drama Point games are narrativist and pulpy. Unless you want to have people one-shotting Citymasters with flechette pistols, you won't like what Drama Points do to a game. Drama Points heavily favor over-the-top action, which not everybody likes in their Shadowrun game. Now, some people *do* like to play Shadowrun this way. And that's fine. But by default, SR4.5 isn't a pulpy game, and it's not meant for this level of action. If you add this, you need to understand that you're taking the game in a direction it's not meant to go. You may accidentally overpower your game.

You can copy the philosophy of drama points without using the mechanics. The mechanics of edge DO fit the concept of "this character is more important to the story / game universe", just not to the extreme that "drama points" do. I'm pretty sure some other games use them to (I recall "plot points" from some game, maybe Feng Shui). Shadowrun may be "dark and gritty", but so are William Gibson's novels, and he's explicitely refered to certin character's as having "edge". I'd bet that is where the term came from in this case.

Yes. And you can fit the concept of Drama Points into Shadowrun, it's just not necessarily a good fit for all people. Everyone likes their Shadowrun a different way, and that's perfectly fine. The catch is that default Shadowrun doesn't work well with the idea of Drama Points.

Drama Points, or Plot Points, or whatever name they go by, exist in a lot of games. And they all work slightly differently in each of them, as befits the system. SR4.5 doesn't fit a narrativist style as well as other games, so a more gamist mechanic (Edge and Critical Successes) were used. If you try and add a more narrativist style to the game, you may not like the result. You're certainly going to see a lot more over-the-top action, which isn't to some people's tastes. You're better off going with a higher-octane game in the first place, or converting Shadowrun to a more narrativist system. Right now, I'm running a Wushu/Shadowrun conversion game. For those of you not familiar with the Wushu system, it's a purely narrative-driven game where the more narrative you give, the better you do. This basically amounts to giving the players near free-rein in describing what they can accomplish, within reason. I won't go into details here, but I've considered running the game here to see what people think.

Anyway, the point is that SR4.5 doesn't play well with Drama Points, or serious narrative mechanics. And that's fine, no system can do everything. But I wouldn't try and shoehorn Drama Points onto a system not designed for it.

As the GM's rules for Dogs in the Vineyard read:

"Say yes, or roll dice."

(Note: "rolling dice" in DitV means combat--which usually starts as a verbal thing and escalates)

The one time I played one of the other players during his little intro thing said the burning building he'd just run out of collapsed on top of the NPC interrogating him. GM let it happen.