The problem is the same for policy as it is for laws, keeping up with change. One of the biggest issues right now (2010) are all these "smart-phones". Users are demanding more access, execs are allowing it and IT is scrambling to secure it. As much as I hate P2.0, it is any perfect example of change (in 2072) that must be dealt with because of user/exec demands.

More than wireless networks, the thing I struggle the most with is cameras everywhere. Add to that face/voice recognition software with another 62 years to refine...

That's how it works in SR4 too. You're not given a free pass just because you're on the wifi, you're in exactly the same position as if you tried hacking in from an outside connection.

Don't forget that having RFID in your underwear means you always know how many clean pairs are in the closet, how many are in the washing bin, it ensures that you don't mix clothing the wrong way in the washing machine, etc.

This post got noticed, right?

Does it count that the guy hijacking the thread runs the site?

I still prefer shadowrun 2e. Although I feel bad for mages that have to learn different spells for different damage levels.

I don't. It is one of the things I liked about SR2 and 1. SR3 and 4 had this learn one spell thing and pick the damage level. Too cheap IMO, SR4 went all the way in this regard, SR3 was a baby step in this direction.

I like the difference between mana dart and bolt I like learning a force 5 spell and after X amount of time learning a force 7 version of the spell. I don't want all the versatility to be on the fly, I want to have to pay for the versatility of having a spell that starts at moderate damage and another spell to start off beast at deadly. I want to have to pay for the force and having to gauge from the get go what the best force for that spell should be.

Now it had issues which depending on the person can be a problem. Like lets say to take B in resources and have 35 points in spells, you take mana ball at force 5, another spell at force 5, and then a crap ton of utility spells that aren't resisted at force 1. That adds too much diversity in my opinion. Don't get me wrong I liked having that bag of tricks as a player but it was potent. All spells should need force to get by, that is an area I like about SR$ force caps your hits. You can't get by with force 1 fashions. You probably don't need it at force 5 though.

I prefer 3e because that's the version I ran the most in. The new system does feel a bit too WoD-y for me, and well, I ran 3e for literally it's entire lifespan (My first forays were actually in 2e, but my major group started just as 3e popped up).

I'm not going to drop 4e though, I'd rather keep Catalyst going even if it's got problems just to keep the game alive. I'm sensing a little too much pissed-offness at them lately. I realize they've screwed a lot of people over, but what are we to do? Give up on the game? Watch it go pfft, or are people honestly hoping Catalyst goes down so someone else picks up the license?

There's obviously a lot of people who play SR v2 or SR v3, who aren't going to stop if Catalyst rolls over and dies.

In all the time they've been putting out SR v4, the main thing they've produced is multiple copies of the main rulebook [3 versions of the main rulebook in 5 or 6 years ??] and rehashes/updates of existing material.

No. He is subject to the same rules and should have started another thread.

Funny, that's half of what they did in SR3 but I didn't hear people complaining about that. But they have produced new material. Emergence was a major campaign that's having effects, they've produced new city books in Feral Cities, Corporate Enclaves and Smuggler's Havens, and another new adventure series in DOTA, and there's more new story coming in the War book.. On the rehash, of course they have to update the core books for the new edition; the 20th Anniversary was meant to be just that, a special edition; and several of the rehashes were stuff that obviously needs to get updated like how the corps are doing.

But anyway, I'm not going to spiral out an argument to get modded.

I could go on and on about how the SR4.5 core mechanic is broken, but that really deserves a separate thread. Fact is, the concept that TN 6 sometimes equaled 7 isn't any worse than some of the core mechanics in SR 4.5 SR 1-3 was about tactical use of dice pools and TN management, while SR4.5 is all about getting the biggest pool you can.

Edit:

According to Knasser, a SR4.5 apologist, Emergence was frankly crap. I don't know about Smuggler's Havens, IIRC that's a SR3 book put out by FASA. If you mean Runner's Havens, then you can find my review of the book Here. Basically, it looks cool but ultimately doesn't deliver where it counts.

You're right, I meant Runners havens, but frankly, it shouldn't be about "apologists" or anything of the like. We all love the game obviously, I'd think we'd want it to continue being produced. Yes, you can always fall back on old material, but eventually that just ends up with stagnation.

We used to play SR3 using the SR2 initiative rules. In all honesty, we never touched the current incarnation (slow people go their one time before fast people go their second time) until SR4. I like SR4... it doesn't have a bunch of math bullshit involved the same way previous editions had.

My entire group has been playing since SR2, in some cases SR1. I don't feel any need to go back to previous editions... I like the current one well enough to play it, even though it means buying new books instead of using the ones I already own. Guess that means I'm voting with my wallet.

And hey, if I was into stagnation, I'd still be playing CP2020.

And in the end, that's all that really matters - play what you want to play, the way you want to play it

^__________________________________^

Ive read 1e and 3e, played 2e and 4e.

2e is my favorite. I liked the 80ies feeling, US-Pop VS Japano VS Celetic influence, the rarity of Metahumans like Elves, Dwarfs, Trolls and Orcs. The diffrence between Mages and Shamans like real totems and ghosts. While a Shaman could summon a Ghost within seconds, the Mage needed hours for it, of course each one had its benefits. Wired chars could act a few times before their opponent even just pulled their gun. Cyberware (Enhancements) where rare, not that rare that everybody turned arround, but 2070+ it is like you get spammed with Cyber- and Bioware, Gen- and Nanotech. Rigging and Decking wasnt that bad back in the days, it could slow up here and there your game but you had a nice topologie. Your decker could work himself thru a system, node for node. I liked to visualize the matrix. My players liked it.
At the bottom line 2e had the best fluff ever, limited rules but definitely the best fluff.

4e compared to 2e. I like the core changes like how edge replaced the combatpool and the change of treshholds. Lets say i like the core system mainly. The VR-matrix action works quick now, really quick, but beeing a Rigger sucks. I mean everyone can rig now. And everyone can hack now. Even a mage in 4e can rig and hack and cast spells, and the best is, it doenst cost him even a slice of his essence.
I misslike the complete AR. Yeah I said it, so what. I dont care about realism within a ScFi-Fantasy RPG. So stuff changed in RL since the 80ies ... What has this to do with Shadowrun? In my POV nothing. Fluffwise 4e still has a few shadowrun elements, but the spirit got lost. During our 4e games my players used to spend so much time with unnecessary things like earsing RFID tags, trying to spot security wholes in WIFI networks, use fake commlinks, secure their PAN and cyberware that we start to ask ourself what are we doing here. Drop magic and the game could be sold as some kind of ghost in the shell rpg. Dang. This aint no shadowrun anymore. My group and me tried over and over again to get some feeling for the new flow. Nada. We quit playing almoste a year ago after 17 years of running thru the shadows.


I would like to see some dumpshock fanwork 4e conversion for 2050-2053. With all the great sr2 flow from back in the days. A conversion that will punch a cat and get girlfriends pregnant!
Where is Frank Trollman when you need him


Edit: If some of you are willing to spend some time into a 4e 2050-53 conversion, i am your man.

Actually, it was written by Dave Arneson himself, an author who was famous for having written much of the original D&D along with Gary Gygax. It resembles an old school dungeon crawl because it was written by one of the guys who invented them . I thought that was awesome, myself. I didn't like the random encounter tables, either, but the plot was good.

I love it. To the point where, in my campaigns, that's just how it has worked all along. Sometimes, I also say Crash 2.0 was the only "Crash" in history, and the one from 2029 didn't happen. The history of the sixth world tends to have enough disasters on it to make something that resembles Fallout or Mad Max more than a cyberpunk future. Some of them can therefore be removed without any great consequence to the setting.

You mean Karma Pool.



You know I hear this more and more and not just with SR but with D&D to... Its almost like a backlash is happening.



If this is what you want the first step is to dump the edges and flaws and go back to priority system. Make Metahumans C and Magician A only Adept B only. Hermetic stay as standard but Shamans loose 2 spells in favor of gaining a mentor spirit. Change the Shaman spirit list using the spirits available in SM. As for the Matrix, steal the rules from Eclipse Phase then have the commlinks come with a standard OS, then you need to make the datajack matter more by giving a die penalty to anyone who doesnt use one. I havent worked on the riggers at all yet. I also recommend doubling the skill caps (not for starting skills) to give it a more old school feel.

I hear you, it's the same with me and my group (except that we didn't quit playing yet).

SR4 may have its problems and lack a bit of the Shadowrun feel, but D&D4 is straight garbage. I gave up d20 gaming several years ago for a multitude of reasons, but the changes in D&D4 don't even feel like the same game and just some kind of World of Warcraftesque pen and paper port for the Short Attention Span Generation.

If you are going to insult garbage, I will have to come to its defense.

At least with garbage, there is a plan to remove it. The same cannot be said for D&D 4.

Toxic Waste is more like it.

BlueMax

Agreed and a half. The only saving grace is Pathfinder and their method of updating the 3.5 D&D rules into something far more awesome.

Yeah, Pathfinder is okay.

Was the game that beat Shadowrun out for Product of the year at this years ENnies.

Much better than that D&D 4th edition crap!

Still banned / on hiatus i am afraid
If you dare venturing there, go look at the gaming den boards, he is quite active there.
Maybe you can get some ideas from there too.

So start the thread and get some folks together, with ideas...

Or even set up a forum somewhere [if you have access to your own server or domain] and set one up there - like someone did for SR v3.

3.5 /pathfinder isn't bad. And to me pathfinder is an improvement on 3/3.5 e. But I'm still a more old school type, my chain mail experience is too limited to comment, but Basic through 2e is where it was at for me. I like the skills of 3e, the way hits work is marginally better than the earlier editions, I like how sneak attack works to some degree. But not a fan of BaB and the attack rate(I prefer only fighters getting multiple attacks), I don't like the spells they feel to mechanical(though no where near as bad as 4e). I ran/played in a basic-2e hodge podge system for along time and that is probably my favorite.

I actually like D&D 4e, but I'll concede one important point: it isn't D&D anymore. Many of the things that made D&D what it is are missing from 4th edition, enough so that if you go in expecting a D&D experience, you're going to be disappointed, confused, and probably angry.

The same thing happens on a slightly different scale with SR4.5. If you go into it expecting the things that made Shadowrun great, you are going to walk away disappointed. If you'll settle for a decent system with an abridged background, then you'll be able to tolerate SR4.5

(I don't know why I'm trying...)

But there's NOT an abridged background to 4e. 4e did not take a torch to the last 20 years of books, they're still there and they still exist to use. It's not like nWoD where they said the entire world ended and now you have to play in this new one.

Your right, its more like Forgotten Realms 4e. Not trying to start an argument I just personally see a lot parallels between D&D 4e FR and SR4. Spellplague = Matrix Crash, Elminster and Drizit still around, Loftwyr and Harliquin still around, etc etc.

While I don't exactly dislike the current backstory, I'd actually have preferred they went that way with SR4. I'm curious to see what they would have done with the setting if they weren't saddled with the weight of 20 years of setting and metaplot.

It wouldn't be the same. One of the biggest points of Shadowrun IS the ever-evolving setting and Metaplot. To toss all that would... Well, it wouldn't be Shadowrun, it'd be freakin Cyberpunk v3.0. *Shivers*

There's absolutely nothing in 4E that negates the metaplot from before.

Things have changed, sure. 4E is set almost 20 years after 3E isn't it? Or is it only 10? You expect things to change.

I always forget which was in 2053.

The Magic, the Enemy, The Cycle. That's all still there.
The UCAS/CAS split, the Megacorps from Hell. Dunkelzhan, Ghostwalker

the metaplot is there.

The 4E fluff is actually pretty good. The problem I think is some of the rules behind it.
The rules don't back up the fluff in a ton of places, but I don't think 4E really changed the background that much.

I am sad to see a move away from the Horrors.. but I think only the people who loved Shadowrun AND earthdawn really care about that.

Well, of course it wouldn't. I'm just not in a hurry to equate "not the same" with "worse". While CP v3 is much worse than the previous edition, I've found that this seems to be an exception. I found the latest editions of WoD, GURPS, Shadowrun and D&D to be great improvements over their predecessors, so I wouldn't shy away from a setting reset on Shadowrun just because it's different from what was there before.

Then you seem to be in a minority, because a lot of people hate what D&D 4 has done, and I know that though the system for nWoD is good, the complete half-assed overhaul they gave to the world initially soured me to the game so much I haven't looked back and still play the old WoD. I hate to ask Bira, but if you don't like the history, why do you keep playing Shadowrun?

1e = 2050; 1989 - 61 years in the future
2e = 2053; 1992 - 61 years in the future
3e = 2060; 1998 - 62 years in the future
4e = 2070; 2005 - 65 years in the future




I wasnt a fan of Earthdawn and I love the Horrors. Well actually I love all of Nigel's work but I think the Horrors (UB) were the best. For me what I really wanted was a cyberpunk with supernatural elements and dice pools. Shadowrun was the closest thing. I tended to downplay the magic (having rare and powerful) but with each edition that has become harder because you need magical security to challenge the mages more than ever. Just my opinion.



This is exactly why I feel D&D FR4e is a much better comparison than nWOD

I don't believe I am, or the games I mentioned would have tanked in the first couple of months after they launched. Unless there's millions of people out there who buy the games just to bitch about them on the Internet . The people who like these games, and regularly play them, probably are just not as vocal as the "top complainers".



Who said I didn't like it? There's quite a bit of it that's interesting, and the rest I just discard for my games. People call it canon, but it's not actually holy. It's not a sin to change it to fit my interests. Besides, Shadowrun is more than its backstory.

What I really like is the premise. As long as it's a game about people slipping through the cracks of society in the cyberpunk future (with magic!), it's still Shadowrun to me. Even if the history, the influences, and the rules change. Which I guess is why I don't quite get it when people complain that SR4 is "not Shadowrun anymore", and happily play Shadowrun with an edited history, heavy Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell influences, and GURPS rules.

Same could be said for Shadowrun, it looks like, hehe.



I suppose it was a sort of misinterpretation when you said you preferred if they chucked the previous stuff. It's a disagreement, perhaps, since I believe that the backstory adds depth to the premise and without it, just doesn't feel right.

Yeah, it was among the games I mentioned .




I'm just really curious as to what they'd do if they didn't have to follow any of the previous backstory. It might be interesting, but I don't consider it an absolutely vital part of the game. Everything my current players knew about SR before they started playing came from the SNES game, which is still remembered fondly even by die-hard fans of the pen and paper RPG, and has nothing to do with it beyond the premise.

The Sega Genesis version of Shadowrun was SO much better than that SNES game.

God do we need a REAL Shadowrun video game!

I liked them both quite a bit. Missed out on the sega CD one though.

I never played the Sega CD one either. I really need to get a hold of that. Love how the cover art is all animed out....

I dunno what to think of this because I really, really disliked 3.X and thought it skewed what little Magic vs. Muscle balance in favor of casters beyond all reasoning. So, really, D&D became D&D to me again when 4th came out. I could actually play a fighter again without feeling like the devs were playing some kind of elaborate joke on me. Back in AD&D, my fighter sported quality saves and had more skills/proficiencies than anyone, a wrecking ball with a necklace of fireballs and a specialization in long swords that actually meant something. In 3x, he was more like the cleric's caddy. It wounded my relationship with D&D in an admittedly silly but still rather fundamental way. For my old group 4th sorta brought the hack 'n' slash back.

I won't argue that 3.X had its own flaws. But those were always part of D&D. Casters, after a certain level, simply overshadowed fighters no matter what, in every edition I've played (and I've played all of 'em). Now things are equal and balanced, which isn't a bad thing-- but it lost something that was inherently D&D. And for the record, I now dislike 3.X and prefer 4e immensely, so make of that what you will. I just don't think it's D&D anymore.

But back on topic, SR4.5 didn't just kill plotlines, it murdered them in their sleep. System Failure was a very poor ending to a lot of very good stories.

For me though the fighter doesn't feel like a fighter anymore. He kind of feels like an anime character with a big ass sword. That isn't inherently bad it just doesn't feel like D&D to me.

3e well I'm of the opinion on the face nothing was balanced, but in play we never had much of an issue. The fighter was probably the top character for single target kills. But when I GMd I did have to go pretty far out of my way to tailor things to deal with magic. Fighters are much easier to eyeball what to throw against them, mages to many tricks and ways to kill. Basic through 2e I think I've only been in 1 campaign that lasted long enough for mages to be bad ass, every other campaign even though it went on for a while mages hadn't really crossed the threshold of being significantly more powerful than anyone else and had actually been weaker for most of the campaign.

Isn't System Failure not a SR4-book, technically? SR4.5 was released a tad later.

And why do people talk about D&D 3.x, but don't do the same with SR4.x?

System Failure is the last SR3 Book

And why do people talk about D&D 3.x, but don't do the same with SR4.x?
I don't know ?
I call it SR4 and SR4A and if you ask the Devs they should say the same
(IIRC in Germany everybody (but One ) calls It that way )

HokaHey
Medicineman

System Failure is an apology for SR4.

And there are several people who correctly call it SR4.5. Not only is the term more accurate, it's more easily understandable to non-Shadowrun players.

I dunno, Caine seems to be the only one I've noticed calling it 4.5, maybe he's equating it with D&D 3.5? Even though 4A wasn't supposed to be a new set of rules, just a 20th Anniversary edition with the current 4e rules errata'd...




Cain: I completely disagree. To begin with, at least some of those plotlines GOT endings, instead of just fading away or being forgotten. (Hell, that's what I started Unsolved Mysteries of the Sixth World over..) And I also disagree that many of them actually ended, as effects of SF's changes are still felt in the backstory.

Art Dankwalther: He had a full plot cycle. He got his cash, we saw him become a Threat as he started picking apart corporations as practice, and then he forced Novatech to open the IPO which set up the whole System Failure stuff to begin with. Out of Dankwalther you get the Crash 2.0, Novatech becoming NeoNET, and the wireless changeover which was probably going to happen in a couple of IC years anyway since the whole Wireless Matrix Initiative was in its beginning stages.

Cross: That whole AAA was going nowhere anyway. It was tiny and its only major boogeyman was the Seraphim, part of which still survives in several factions.

Deus/Pax: Well Deus might have gotten the shaft in his ending, but A) he had a whole major plotline in end of 2nd/beginning of 3rd anyway with the whole Shutdown.... And to be honest? I've combed through SF to write this and you NEVER get a full bit on what happens to Deus or Pax, meaning they could very well still be around.

Poland: That plot was minor and was probably going to get resolved within a few years.

Ibn Eisa: I'm convinced that considering that whole idea was created before 9/11, in retrospect there was someone who felt the whole thing was a bit awkward anyway, so it was written out neatly when they could.

Winternight: Well, to be honest this was about the best sort of thing that something like Winternight would hope for anyway, a global chance to end the world. THey didn't end it, but they still changed stuff. And though they were largely written out with the mention in the S-K section of Corp Guide that their last HQ was nuked, they could still be out there.

Second American Revolution: This one. This one I'll agree went stillborn. It went as a decent story thread in Threats 2 but flat out petered out. All it really did was get Haffener dead, Daviar missing, and Colloton as President.

So there we go. Some of the plots that died were from Threats 2. Others were minor parts of YotC or Shadows of Europe. I'd say the only really long-term plots that ended in System Failure was Deus, Winternight (and they didn't really get much press other than the original Threats anyway), and Art Dankwalther. And some of them only got ambiguous endings anyway, so you could pull what you want and extend it.

So D&D3.5 is not easily understandable to non-D&D players? Or why the difference in terms with two games that both have two slightly different rulesets for one version (D&D3.0/ 3.5 vs. SR4/ 4.5)?



I don't have a problem with the term SR4.5 in itself, only if it's used with a negative undertone.