Bloody Hellfire, Cain...we ALL want clarifications and errata. I don't know why you feel otherwise.

Wushi or Fengshui rely on the DM and players to wing it for pretty much every game action. (close, but you know, not quite). But Feng shui is a a great product.

As for your second point, you have repeatedly over a period of longer than two years used Savage Words as a benchmark when determining the quality of a game mechanic. I never said you called it perfect. I said you held it out as a bastion of quality, which you do (as demonstrated via repeated benchmarking against that as a metric). I'm not sure what two years of advocacy and benchmarking could otherwise be called.

Frank has rebutted the citymaster example yet again above (ps, the last rebuttatle of that was the thread I was previously discussing)

And please stop with the personal attacks. My examples are correct +/- 2%. If you care to refute them, please do so.

Can we start with why a 'superpowers' character (the kung fu guys from deadlands, supers in the base book) require a spell and edge for each spell, while the blessed have one skill and automatically know all spells, including higher level spells (Vet etc) for 1 edge, at the cost of periodically losing their powers for no reason, which is terrible game design. Either the DM is forced to write a story for them to regain their powers, or the character will be retired, or the character is now severely disadvantaged.

Characters need to be at the power level of the other characters at all times - blessed are wildly on wide side or the other at all times.

I'd like to continue discussing this, but this thread has been derailed enough. Would you mind PMing me, if you want to talk about this further?

No Cain - you said that you didn't introduce the Citymaster - Called Shot argument. As is clearly shown, you were the first person who raised it in this thread. The fact that you added that people whinge about it doesn't change that, it only shows you getting in a pre-emptive shot in the ensuing arguments you know will follow.



Oddly enough, I disagree with this. Implicit in your statement are two assumptions that are quite revealing. The first is the statement that the Citymaster only comes out when the GM wants to "screw the players." This isn't true for me and I doubt it's true for most of us. The Citymaster comes out when it is realistic for it to do so. You are obviously arguing from a position wherein the GM has a much more overtly adversarial role to the players than many of us. The trouble with this position for purposes of your argument against SR4 is that when the GM is against the players, any amount of rules wont save the players. The GM sets up the opposition and can make it as tough as she likes. Thus the problem is the GM relationship with the players - not any mechanics. The second illustrative assumption in your post is that you say the citymaster can be despatched if there is no "ulterior motive" involved. In fact, that is quite different to situations in which I have GM'd where I have desparately hoped I wont be forced into the position of killing the players. In saying that the vulnerability of the Citymaster is dependent on GM motivation, you are creating a situation where the player's ability to affect the course of the story is diminished. In my games, if the players find a Citymaster, their chances against it are independent of whether I am trying to kill them or not - because I wont be.

This is the most critical part of your post. By leaving it entirely up to GM discretion, you also leave it totally in the hands of GM motivation. A GM who wants realism might say no if Mr. Lucky were to fire a pistol, but say yes if he were to fire an anti-vehicular rocket (never mind that the rocket is the harder shot of the two). A GM who wants cinematics might say yes to either, thinking it'd be cool.

But by making the rule totally dependent on GM motivation, you seriously diminish the player's narrative ability, and thus their ability to have fun with the game.

As a story teller, the players only have the narrative the GM gives them. They are not the story tellers in any way shape or form, nor should they be. This is the territory of the gm, and like when the players are bad, when a gm is bad it ruins the fun for everyone. While there are many, many, many things wrong with SR4, this is not one of them. As this is the inherritant soul of any gaming group, without the GM there would be no game. Just 4 guys sitting around talking about the cool things they could do.

I thought discussing the Citymaster-"issue" was declared off-limits? Can someone find the thread of infinite length? To my dismay I don´t remember the original topic.

Cain - you have misread what I wrote. I haven't said that I leave the interpreation of the rules up to the GM's motivation toward the players. I said that this is what I don't do. And I also said that I think this is how most other GM's behave. It was you that said the Citymaster generally appears in order to "screw the players."

I also pointed out that if a GM has a motivation against the players, then only the most inept of GMs would need to express that bias through fiddling the rules when introducing a second citymaster would be a much simpler way of killing them.

@ Kremlin - I tailor everything in my game world to my players, or rather they tailor it to the world we decide we want to play in. Both, really. Which is to say, that I base the security of the facility off of the value of the goods, and the value of the goods off of the professional level of the runners, which is my game I typically base off of their previous successes and ultimately their dice pool. So while I don't go - Ok, Rook has a pistols DP of 18 so the Sec Guard of this Stuffer Shack needs to be an elven former pistols championship winner to match him. I do go, ok, so they have DPs in the X, y, and z range and to be adequately challenged they need about N opposition, which makes sense for this particular type of facility with this type or value of goods inside/ person to kill/ kidnap. Neither myself nor the players in my game have any interest in playing through scenarios where they steamroll the opposition, so as they scale in power, the jobs they get offered increase in difficulty and they stay challenged.

I realize I phrased this badly earlier and just wanted to let you know what I meant. Also, there is magical opposition where there should be magical opposition. If they do not have the resources to deal with it, then they need to get them(hire somebody), or find a way to circumvent the spirit or lure it off or what have you. As for mages getting KO'd by spirits, I have never had a dedicated conjurer in my group, it is generally definitely a secondary concern, so maybe at higher levels of usage there is a problem, I don't know. I'm just saying that so far, in my experience(only a little over a year or so now so nothing at all like some of you guys) the cost of summoning or summoning and binding a spirit tailors pretty evenly to the benefits. I guess I might feel differently if someone was trying to abuse them or if I were playing in a low enough power game that the places they were hitting wouldn't even have a sec mage contracted out for astral and or spiritual support. I haven't been in those situations, but I can see how it might be a problem.

Chris

EDIT: Oh, and in reference to "If the facility has spirits assigned to it, and the team doesn't have one they are dead" thing you said, for one while spirits are tough opponents, I've yet to see a single spirit wipe a party, and more importantly to my point and the reason I feel the way I do about these is that most facilities that would be attacked by a team that doesn't bring magic with them, but would have magic backup available works on a contracting system. Where one mage wards several areas and stays home with his stable of spirits and depending on services offered maybe contracts to a couple of sites without warding them and responds depending on the contractual service paid for. Some places only shell out for one spirit back-up with more optional at a nominal fee if necessary, some contract for the full spirit swarm with astral mage combo- these being the ones just below on staff mage level. Most of these are only called on in terms of magical emergency though. Breech in a ward, mage blowing people up, and other things along those lines because of fees. Disruption fees, mage damage fees, extended service charges, etc. So, if the team doesn't bring the magical smack down and they are low power enough that they are breaking into places with contractual magic protection, then the magic doesn't get turned on them either because nothing brings it in. If they are professional enough to go after a place that logically should have an on site mage and they don't have magic, well, they need to figure a way around it. Hire an outsider, drug him off-site, shoot him in the eye from a distance, and other things along those lines.

I didn't actually accuse you of that, did I? If so, I apologize. But at any event, within a standard SR4 game, a Citymaster is heavy artillery. Pulling one out on even a twinked starting team is a sign you're playing hardball. Why you're playing hardball suddenly is up in the air, and doesn't really matter. You're not planning on being nice when the big guns come out.


Not when one is supposed to be able to do the job. And the sudden appearance of 9 Citymasters would be a signof a major set of grudge monsters.

This is blatantly untrue. There are many games on The Forge, for example, where the players also have narrative power. Some people are going to start screaming "Shill! Heretic! when I mention Wushu, but that's the indie game I have the most familiarity with; and in tha game, the players have almost as much narrative control as the GM. In combat, they definitely do. Among the more traditional games, both of my favorites have "Dramatic Editing", where the player can directly affect the narrative, and the rules support it.

And this brings us full circle to what has been said all along. Cain - you would prefer a game where the GM had less power relative to the players. And that is fine and nobody has a problem with that. You could even start a thread on Dumpshock talking about how to go about that and some people would probably be quite interested. But it's not the intent of the Shadowrun rules to be like this so it's not correct to say that they're horribly broken because they aren't. Many or us (and I think it's fair to say most of us) enjoy a more traditional game set-up where the GM actually is in charge and is expected by the players to use his or her judgement.

Is it possible to salvage this thread now and reach some amicable conclusion whereby we just accept that both parties want different things from the game system and that it isn't horribly broken to us but we in turn recognise that the system hasn't been what you wanted?

Really, there are many of us playing very happily, so I don't think the rules can be so terribly flawed. But I don't think anyone at all will object to you saying "I would prefer it with X instead of Y".

Peace,

-Khadim.

This is my opinion, and therefor it is beyond contestation. Players are not the story tellers, they are the actors, the gm, the Director/Writer. I know not of these other games you speak of because this is a SHADOWRUN board and we speak of Shadowrun here. You may be rght of those "other games" but not in Shadowrun, at least not the way it is intended (read the front of the book).

If you wish to have the mishmash directionless jumble of a player run narraative by all means, that is up to you. What I am saying is, in SR, the storytelling is the pervue of the GM alone. As it should be.

The problem is that this thread is about rules problems. While I agree that the level of player narration is a subject for another thread, the original issues I brought up-- Longshots and Called shots-- remain as legitimate topics for this thread. However, I can't seem to be able to bring up an extreme example of the called shot issue without it getting into a screaming match over the role of the GM.

And still, no one has answered the question: How many house rules does it take, until you're not playing the same game anymore? GM "discretion" may as well be the same thing as house rules. And with so much of the game dependent on GM fiat, who's to say we're all playing the same game?

Oh, so the GM tells the story, and the players just follow his script?


Never has been, and in fact the trend in SR4 has been towards more player narration. Since you apparently haven't been exposed to many indie games, or had a bad experience with one, I won't go into the "mishmash" comment. But I will point out that even in a movie, the actors are constantly giving feedback to the director, who frequently adopts their suggestions. The director/writer is not The Final Arbiter of the movie.

In a roleplaying game, the whole point is to explore the character's stories, and not to follow the GM's script. Otherwise, it's just the GM ordering people around.

As far as SR4 goes: take a look at the Critical Success rules. That's one of the strongest player-narrative mechanics in the game. The player-- and not the GM-- decides what happens.

Giving advice or suggestions is not story telling. Players often make suggestions, and offer advice to me. These are acceppted and considered. But at the end of the day, I am the story teller. I would like you to point to the pages in the book where it says "the players are the story tellers and gm should do what they say". Can you do that for me?

Game, set, match. Victory: everyone but Cain.

I would like you to point to the pages in the book where it says: "the players are my servants, and must do as I say". Can you do that for me?

That's a strawman, I never said that. I did say though...



Emphasis mine.

Argue against my arguments Cain, I both respect you and your opinion; please avoid making up what I say, then arguing against that.

While normally Cain posts some pretty dumb things, the last four posts were all horrible loads of bollox.

I think I'll go in reverse:

Actors are not the final arbitors of a movie. The Director mostly is, though with few exceptions the actual studio heads really are.
That said, shared narrative control games have yet to acheive main stream popularity. Is it because they are new? hardly, they've been around longer than D&D 3E. Is it because they are poorly advertised? Not really, you mentioned the Forge. IPR (their publishing arm) and the Forge in some ways exist entirely as a PR front for their games, branding if you will, a movement. The Forge/IPR have booths at Gencon every year, and go to many other cons around the country.

How about this: They fail because players are lazy creatures. You think about that? I find that when a bunch of people want a game they first argue over who has to be the GM, or they start looking for someone else to GM. As a GM I find it remarkably easy to find players, however. GMing is work.

As a GM, however, I also see how hard it is to actually get many players invested in their characters beyond knowing how bad ass their gun skill is, or what neat toy they picked up. A few might play in character, but 9 times out of ten if you ask them how many siblings their character has you'll get a blank look. They don't care, they don't want to care.

Sharing Narrative control works the same way. The moment you start telling players that they are responsible for making stuff up they'll either respond with stunning indifference or start pulling childish shit because they can. I've actually heard GMs tell me their players quit after being asked to start making stuff up, claiming 'That's the GM's job'.


As for the Citymaster as 'GM punishing the players'... I hate to be the one to tell you, but the GM doesn't have to do that. Thor shot exists in game, and there ain't a damn thing the player can do about it.

The Citymaster exists because it makes sense in the setting to have something of that sort. It shows up because it exists, and has a place. When the reasons for its existance come up, in game, then my default the citymaster should show up.

No amount of rules, or even lack of rules, can prevent a GM from being an asshole. You can have an asshole GM in Wushu, and the game will suck mightily.

Here is the thing: This doesn't seem to be about how broken it is for you to be able to oneshot a citymaster. If you recent posts are an example, the actual existance of Citymasters in the game at all is an affront to your sensibilities. How DARE the game designers put something in the rules that starting charaters can't easily beat! Let me see if I can find a way to beat it, that'll show them!'

Which is obnoxiously childish and silly. Crowing about your lack of mastery of the rules as a means of proving how broken it is just looks silly on top of it. Sticking your head in the sand whenever called on it?



But lets face it: Everything you said about the Citymaster can also be said about Dragons in D&D, about 1000 pt characters in Hero, about Stone in Deadlands (does he exist in the savage worlds edition? No? Yes? Whatever, fine: Reckonners), and probably a thousand other examples from various Savage Worlds settings. It means, for whatever reason, that the characters had either run, or be prepared to prove how bad ass they really are.

that a piss poor GM can haul one out at any time means nothing. that You, Cain, can convienently ignore things that make it impossible for a character to 'one shot' one inappropriately proves nothing.

Then so long as issues of role of player / GM is cast as a preference, I am happy to accept any position you put forward as it pertains to yourself. Though it remains an interesting subject to debate and perhaps a new thread would help keep that topic free of taint of the arguments going on in this one.

However, with regard to this:


The reason we keep getting into the role of GM with this is that the book quite clearly states that the GM decides if a vulnerable point exists or not. Following this rule instantly resolves the long shot "problem" (I use quote marks because some people are fine with the world's luckiest person pulling off super-lucky shots). It's only a problem if you regard it as a bad thing for the GM to have to make that call as the book instructs. In this, you are very much a minority so inevitably you end up having to try and convince others that the GM shouldn't have to make that call. Or rather you have to convince people of this if the position of the rules being so badly broken is to be maintained.

Now my personal point is that I believe that GM judgement calls such as this are unavoidable. The GM is responsible for communicating the world to the players. When a player asks if a vehicle has windows or not, whether the rigger is in a sealed cocoon or not, there is no other source for that information than the GM. And it is that information that decides whether, for example, a vulnerable point exists. The GM is not making a judgement call on the rules - and the called shot rules don't say that he is - but making a decision on what is actually there in front of the characters. You can't escape that in a game where the GM is running the world alone. Only in games like the ones you mention, where the world construction is apparently shared, is that possible. As you say, the merits of that are a separate discussion, but we can at least see that such a system is necessary to get away from the "GM Fiat" that you dislike. No rule system that doesn't share this responsibility between GM and players can avoid it. And Shadowrun is such a GM-focused rule system.



I will happily provide my own answer to this, though I can't speak for anyone else. The moment the rules differ, you are playing a different game. But it's very much a sliding scale of difference. Whether or not it is too different for your purposes depends on what those purposes are. Even I have a couple of tweaks in there, but we all seem to be able to deal with each others variations. It's accepted generally that GM's customise games to suit them. Regardless of the rules perfection or lack of, we all simply have different tastes.

Regards,

-Khadim.

You're right and I apologize. However, it's worth repeating: the story is about the PC's, and not the story the GM wishes to tell. I've seen some very bad GM's out there, who have done the railroad/glass tunnel approach to gaming. Heck, I was one of them! The more you say: "I am the GM, I am in control", the more you encourage this sort of bad GMing. For me, it wasn't until I realized that I didn't have to have absolute control, that I finally started maturing as a GM.

I submit to all the GM's out there: try the experiment. Turn more control over to your players. If it fails, you've lost nothing. But if it succeeds, you'll be a better GM for it.

I would like to ask, for the second time here, and the third time overall, just how you expect to be targetting the driver of the citymaster in the first place. See post #401 for more detail as to what I mean.

Chris

He has actually answered that one. It doesn't make much sense but I'll try to sum it up anyway:

First, he takes the blind fire penalty, since an additional -10 dice doesn't affect a dice pool of 0 long shot anyway.


Secondly, he likes, as a player, to have narrative control as much as possible to do 'cool stuff', as he would in Wushu, so we can assume that he simply narrates that the driver is driving with one hand on the wheel, the window down and with the wind in his face, a la some cartoon.

Which, despite a little creative license snark is actually as accurate a summary of his arguements as I can make.


EDIT::: My bad, he narratively controls that some jackass leaves a hatch open for him to ricohet bullets and knife blows through. Which, ironically enough, is supported by Synner (who by Cain's book, is in the 'anti-cain' crowd)

I think I have said a lot now and it's fairly well supported, and that there's a strong risk that more I could say on the subject would simply be repetitious. I'm not dropping out of the thread, but just saying that I have a growing desire for peace and a desire to avoid bloodshed.

Cain - this is a separate issue, but with regard to your shared narrative games, I don't know if this book would be of interest to you. It's all about the theatre, but it talks quite a bit about "blocking" and "status" between improvisers and it occurs to me it might have applications in shared storytelling games or whatever the correct term is. It's a very good book at any rate. The same author also wrote this which I haven't read but which looks even better for role-players in shared narrative games.

No further posts will be responded to by this point... because I'm going to bed.

Peace and Good night,

-Khadim.

By the rules, the driver is being targeted. In game, however, Mr Lucky is just squeezing off a prayer shot at the open hatch, hoping for an (*ahem*) lucky ricochet. A longshot is about sheer dumb luck anyway, so being able to hit what you can't see isn't a big deal, either by fluff or by mechanics.

Again, see post 401, my point was, how does Mr. Lucky know there is a driver to target? Much less the approximate space not covered by his armor.

Chris

Cain I agree with you about bad G's ruining the game. However the story is whatever the GM comes up with, and it nvolves the players, not necessarily about the players. Many games I have ran in the past had absolutley no player involvement other than they were the guys who got the job. Their personal lives and stories had nothing to do with it. There ae games where the personal stories of characters are the driving force, but they are still told, and controlled by the GM. I think you are confusing railroading with story telling.

Yes there are gm's who railroad, no telling a specific story is not railroading.

What about Exalted? I haven't mentioned it much, since I haven't actually played it; but the stunting system is not only a form of shared narrative control, it's reportedly one of the most popular parts of the game.

I've run Wushu countless times, and I've never once had this problem.


He doesn't have to. This is a lucky shot. The called shot part is mechanics, not fluff.

Haven't you experienced it when you have two options set up, and the players take a third, unexpected one? No insult intended, but that's pretty common in my experience. In fact, in my experience, that's the norm. I might be the main story teller, but everything the players do is also part of that story. If they weren't an integral part, then bad players couldn't disrupt the game so much.

When it comes right down to it, the players have always had shared narrative control. In most cases, it's been restricted to their own character; but increasingly, more and more games are adopting shared narrative mechanics for the main story. And this hasn't hurt gaming in the slightest. On the contrary, many games have improved.

We've been through this one before too. The player does not decide what happens. The player can add 'flourishing details' to the result. Not the same thing at all, but you know that, as we (not just you and I) have, as I said, gone through this before.



Note that this is also at the GM's discretion, although the text advises the GM to let the player embellish the result (technically in one way, as it does not even say 'flourishing details).

How can you call a shot to bypass the Citymaster's armor and also call a shot to bypass the (unseen) driver's armor at the same time?

Yeah but if you had a real ultra-pushover GM who allowed ridiculous interpretations of rules then you could be like "the Citymaster EXPLODES and pieces of flaming wreckage land on all my enemies and also money (not on fire) falls down in a ten foot radius around me" and he would be like "okay" and therefore SHADOWRUN IS BROKEN QED.

Technically, the vehicle's armor is added to the driver's, so it counts as his. You then get to bypass both. Cheesy, yes, but that's rather the point.

I have become very sleepy for the last day or so, and Knasser has started doing coke, and he has definitively slayed the Cain as far as I'm concerned.

Here's the problem: this argument has stopped going anywhere. Everyone says "GM fiat good, rules problems pointed to don't exist," and Cain responds "GM fiat bad, rules problems do indeed exist." We're going in a circle. Let's call it here, huh? The positions have been stated, restated, and rerestated, without either side conceding anything. Nor is either side likely to concede anything. It's just a matter of time before this becomes (more of) a pure flame war and gets locked. Let's all disentangle ourselves before that happens, while we still have our dignity, k?

You're right that I'm not conceding anything. But to get this discussion back on track: I contend that the Longshot rules and the called shot rules are obvious rules problems. For called shots, I offer the numerical +4/-4 imbalance. For Longshots, I offer the Shot Heard Round the Barrens. For both combined, I offer the Citymaster.

Only the third example has been attacked and/or examined, and the consensus was that it's not a problem if you GM fiat it away. In other words, you house rule it. Which indicates that the rule is broken, since people need to fix it.

Cain I never give the players option a or option b. Never. No gm I know who's worth a salt does. You set up the story, set up the situations and you let the players figure out how to do it. That's their job thats the part they get to decide on, everything else, i.e. the story, is the GM's job. Situations that players chose random crap is not story.

May have been a bad choice of words, but I think you get my meaning. You have a story all set up, then the PCs do something that totally blows your preparations out of the water. I think that's happened to just about everyone who GMs. So, you roll with it, improvise, and run with the story the PC's are already headed towards. The players might not be wholly driving the story, but they certainly just steered it in their chosen direction. In short, they took a measure of narrative control.

The problem is fundamental. GM fiat/discretion/whatever you choose to call it means different thing to different people and here is the crux of the matter. Some people look at the GM and see the catch-all, the last line of defense and the GM should be filling in the gaps where the game rules come up short and see it as a good feature of the game system. Some others look at the GM and say that the rules themselves should be as comprehensive and flexible as possible without using the copout of putting in "GM discretion necessary" and GM discretion is indicative of a bad game system. Until you resolve this issue, there won't be anyone conceding anything.

And that kids is why I just pull the whole run out of my ar...

I mean intense preparation and fully thoughtout plotlines.

On a serious note ( and to keep on topic), I think we can all agree the entire matrix is one huge obvious rule problem.

First of all: Exalted is NOT a 'shared Narrative Game' by any stretch of the definition. If anything the Forge, which you mentioned earlier, was a REACTION to White Wolf's very strong emphasis on GM narrative control. AT BEST Exalted rewards players who step up to 'narrate' their own actions by provided a few bonus dice to tests if it's well described.

If anything, white wolf products would be the antithesis of what you are apparently trying to force us to assume is the standard (the old, you have all been doing it wrong technique...)




And you apparently play with people who share your mindset. That does not mean that the 'rest of RPGdom' shares your outlook. Look, if I really wanted I could find a group of people that though crap was a useful sex aid. THe fact that everyone in the group thinks that crap is a useful sex aide does not make it a standard behavior.

While liking Wushu's shared narrative is in no what similar to crap=teh sexah, my original model train analogy just wouldn't go the distance. It remains that just because you and a few other people like something it isn't the case that it must necessarily be 'the right way', no more than mochachino icecream is better than chocolate or vanilla, despite being a popular flavor with a certain crowd.


As for the last bit: your constant hand-waving away things that 'break' your example is tiresome. I've tried at least once to convince you that making a logical rational argument should resemble, on some level, the art of making a new scientific theory. You make your theory and then you submit it to tests and trials. If and when it fails those trials, you can not just ignore them, you must alter your theory, or discard it, to account for those failings.

You have an end result you want, and you are constantly rejecting anything that hurts your end state. This is the opposite of the 'scientific' method, which really should have a more generic term like 'rational method' or something.


Let me go over the counter arguments again, some of the flaws if you will with your arguments:

First of all, the entire 'bypassing armor' requires approval from the GM. Regardless of how you feel about GM fiats, this is not an 'arbitrary' call, it is specifically called for in the rules. You yourself have stated that your entire example hinged upon the 'in game' rational of there being an open hatch of some sort, even if it requires a miraculous ricochet. The DEVS have stated that the miraculous ricochet is a feature they intended to have for longshots and high edge.

Second, you are, by your own admission, not actually attacking the Citymaster at all, but the driver. Therefore, from the get go, your entire name is a bit of propaganda, a false statement designed to make it look worse than it is.

Following this train of thought you are attacking the driver (a passenger, in a sense). As in any case (what is the weather like, what sort of lighting is there) the GM makes a call about how much cover is provided. You can not allow the GM to make one call (weather) without expecting it to be perfectly valid for him to make another call (total cover). If you DON'T allow that sort of call at all, then you are playing so far from the norm for shadowrun that it's worthless to talk about how the rules interact with your playstyle. They aren't designed around those assumptions. Analogy: Its like complaining your Ford Festiva is a terrible ship. While it may have many characteristics of a ship (made of metal, a vehicle, carries passengers and cargo) it is not, at the end of the day, a ship.

Since the Citymaster, reasonably enough, provides 'Total cover' the passenger must be attacked as if through a barrier. While you refuse to acknowledge that, it doesn't change the fact that the rules make that case. This further invalidates your case in that you can't suddenly bypass the armor of the citymaster, making your longshot test essentially worthless. While you certainly CAN bypass the armor of the citymaster, it means that the citymaster, not the pilot, makes the body test to resist damage, something it can quite easily do with it's 16 body.

Third: It has been revealed on close examination that you have not been accounting for the defense tests in any real manner. This is a particularly obnoxious oversight given the fact that one disadvantage of any longshot test is that you are perforce working with a limited dice pool. When a vehicle is attacked the pilot makes a defense check. When a vehicle is attacked you can either attack the vehicle or the passengers. These are not mutually exclusive situations, as you seem to be claiming. In fact, arguably, attacking the pilot gives him TWO defense tests, one for the vehicle (if the vehicle is attacked...) and one for himself (the passenger may make a dodge test at -2 dice pool), though you blithely assumed that the pilot was a rigger, which meant you longshot test would almost certainly be countered simply by the driver swerving away gracefully.

You have also blithly assumed that you could bypass the passenger's armor as part of bypassing the vehicle's armor. Doing so with a 'blind shot' calling on top of things to boot. Interesting. I, for one, would say at a minimum that that would be two, seperate, called shots. However, as you only get one free action, you could only do one or the other. Not that it matters much if the target ISN"T in total cover (they don't get the vehicle armor then, they get a cover bonus to defense), then you can safely ignore the armor of the citymaster to no penalty.

In fact, you entire case rests on a series of increasingly improbable assumptions about what is allowable, simply by virtue of an explicite ruling saying that you can not. For example, there is no explicit rule that says you can't make a called shot if the target is obscured by 'total cover'. On the other hand the Called Shot rule doesn't explicitly allow you to make one whenever, and however you want. Funny thing, that. As I like to say, what is good for the goose is GREAT for the gander. Of course, the Called Shot rule explicitly allows a GM to decide what can and can't be a called shot.


There is no shoddy rules here, only shoddy reading of the rules.

At the end of the day, the biggest crime committed by the 'Knifing a Citymaster' is assuming that relying on a few common sense calls, in a game built around the assumption that common sense calls must be made, is bad.

Which is funny, since most of the 'shared narrative GM is bad' stuff I've read suggests that players veto actions that don't make sense, and I'm pretty sure that most sensible players, even without a GM, would agree that these are bad calls and would make them anyway. Allowing someone to casually, blindly, knife, or even shoot, the pilot of an armored vehicle with all those assumptions is what ruins the fun for a lot of people.

Of course, I can only slightly facetiously point out that by using your chain of 'logic' as demonstrated in this one example, its perfectly permissable to shoot someone with a knife. After all I'm sure saying 'its only a melee weapon' is a GM Fiat, the rules don't explicitly state you CAN"T shoot knives. They must be broken then.

I'm gonna jump out on a limb there and say that post is too long, and it's too late in the "conversation," for many people to actually read the whole thing.

Ah. I know.

But you know? I love me some long posts. Its an indulgence, really. Of course, a post like that does belong rather late in the topic anyway... though I could reasonably wait until next time the topic sprouts (next week maybe?) and sort of push it in the right direction faster, thus posting before exhaustion started to set in?


Is it wrong to treat the internet as a giant computer RPG I'm playing? If I get this post in with all the right points set up in advance ten pages earlier I go up a level!

Ok I am bored, acid test time

This gets proven one way or the other
I will GM Cain's examples

Cain, surely you cannot claim I am biased against you, your SIG says otherwise

Spike, you want him to put up? then you put up on the bet and allow me to GM it

3 point social parry defense value stunt. You block Cain's attack and gain your choice of XP or willpower/essence.

Kremlin KOA: Don't hold up on my account. The idea is that its a public shakedown anyway, so even if CAIN were GMing we'd see just how things worked out, ideally.

Not that I'm suggesting Cain as an ideal GM for the purposes of a 'put up or shut up' test, just sayin'. Your bias, either way, would be visible in the testing process.

I'd offer to run one of the NPC's if I didn't think that would invalidate the challenge as presented, so you have my blessings.

Ok, Cain, I'm getting the impression that instead of going back to read my post- which in a thread this long and with so many people arguing I guess it is understandable you wouldn't want to bother(or I could be wrong and maybe you read it and it just didn't come off that way)- It just seems like you are responding to the little blurbs of clarification I'm throwing out instead of referencing the orignal argument. So, I'll put that argument back up here in this post. I would seriously like a response as to what you think about this because I'm not trying to find a way to negate your examples- this is honestly how I would run it in my game and how I feel the rules are supposed to be understood. I could be wrong, but I obviously do not think I am or I wouldn't continue posting. So, please, read this, give it more than just a cursory glance if you have time, and let me know if you need clarification on anything and then tell me what you think. I would appreciate it very much, if you would give me that much of your time.

Thanks,
Chris

My Point is in here!

Sounds much more reasonable. OTOH i do similar, but occasionally throw in the overly hard or overly easy run as a curveball.... keeps them guessing


yup

thankyou, many people are not this considerate



It is not a game breaker, but at the higher conjuring levels magicians do overpower non matrix mundanes.





nice, mind if I steal that idea?

um you are a little off on this one. Exalted has many mechanics which reward players for taking a degree of narrative control. Motivation, intimacies, Stunts and Fair Folk Charms all come to mind. Part of the reason it is more popular than WoD is because it gives more empowerment to the players.

Just Saying

EDIT: As a further example, exalted gives the players powers which allow them to veto the GM when he says "Rocks Fall, Everybody dies" (Heavenly Guardian Defense, or Seven Shadow Evasion)

Already factored into the example. You'll see a -6 Total Cover modifier amongst the -52 in penalties.


I already brought up this point, but in respect to SR4. Just because there's a certain population that likes it as is (and excepting toturi, I have yet to meet someone who actually likes 100% of the Rules As Written) doesn't mean the route of GM as absolute god is "the right way" either.

This is an objectively refutable statement. Show me where, on page 162, it states that you must shoot through a barrier to specifically target a passenger. Show me where, on page 157, it says Shooting Through Barriers is applied to targeting a passenger. Heck, show me where, on page 141, it says that in order to have the Blind Fire penalty, the target must be on the opposite side of a barrier?

It doesn't? Then my point is correct.

This is also objectively false. An NPC on a motorcycle still gets the full benefit of its armor. I see no exceptions, or anything saying they get the cover bonus instead. They get both, no exceptions.

Gladly. I've already posted the starting character, the one that was used wasn't much different. Slightly higher Quickness, an Expert System and an Attention Coprocessor. No new gear; Arsenal hadn't come out at that point, and Augmentation was brand new.

To further test it, I submit that I shouldn't be the only one running Mr. Lucky; I'd like to see two others try it, to prove that it isn't just me and clever tactics. I'd like to show that it's the character, not the player.


You're right and I apologize. Basically, (and assuming that I'm understanding your point correctly) while mechanically it's a called shot, in game terms (the fluff) he's just firing blindly into the vehicle and hoping to hit something. A longshot represents dumb luck, not skill, which is part of my problem with it. Once you reach longshot territory, skill ceases to matter in favor of luck.

But back on topic: Mr. Lucky isn't actually targeting anything, he's just squeezing off a prayer shot. It's the player who knows there's a driver, and can decide where he wants his Longshot to try and go. And no, this isn't metagaming: players are constantly translating their tactics into game terms.

I hope I answered your question. If I didn't, feel free to point out what aspects I got wrong.

hmm, that is an amusing point... it was not so in SR3 can anyone get confirmation on this?


MWAHAHAHAHA

the game is on. Okay signups for Mr Lucky 1 2 and 3 are awaiting vitcims volunteers.

I want a pistols Mr Lucky, a Longarms Mr Lucky and an Automatics Mr Lucky