I'm not actually saying anything of the sort.

The wireless of Shadowrun is nothing like the wireless of today. It's intrusive and it's counter-intuitive. It doesn't feed on the human desire for knowledge and information, it runs off the counteracting human resistance to control. People want smartphones because it gives them access to information and entertainment. People use store loyalty cards because they are easy and offer some kind of perceived benefit. But at their choosing. An interpretation of the Wireless Matrix that presented a refined concept of that would be cool. People could choose to have commlinks so they could do all of that. What instead 4e offers is a future where you're tied down to that information and essentially become its slave. And it just doesn't make sense. Smartphones are a luxury item. People want them, but nobody has to have them. The technology is in the "Oh cool!" phase of consumer development.

You can't just add 60 years and say the technology suddenly counteracts human nature, lol. People do a lot of things today because the technology allows them to, they don't know better, and the perceived thread is low to nonexistent. Smart people today know what the dumb people don't. It just takes the ignorant people a while to catch up. Thirty years ago, most people only barely knew how to operate a computer. .If the savvy people today recognize the kind of problems with information security, in sixty years, maybe that's now common knowledge.

Like I said, it's pretty impossible to make blanket statements about the future of technology and consumer acceptance. GM and Ford hedged their bets on trucks and SUVs and eased back on developing competitive passenger cars. It didn't even take them a decade to see the error in that.

I don't claim to have your grasp of human nature, lol. However, I think I'd rather bet that people will *always* 'not know better'. Your premise is that people *stop being stupid*. Take a moment and consider that; it's possibly the most outlandish prediction anyone has ever made.

People *today* are 'slaves' to their information. Your phone *today* can be location-tracked (and your car), and it has your call history (so does the company, of course) and full contact book, and probably browser history, bookmarks (including banks, etc.), passwords. Right now. We're already in the horrifying dystopian future you say is impossible.

Again, you're (I assume, deliberately) mischaracterizing my 'prediction'. I'm not talking about SUVs versus sedans. I'm talking about wireless versus wired. This is an entirely different category of comparison, and you know it.

You unlock your car wirelessly and drive home using the GPS on your phone, stopping for a coffee and 'checking in' there on their wifi. You make a phone call using your wireless Bluetooth headset. You get home and turn on your PS3 by pressing a button on the wireless controller; the console starts up and connects to the internet wirelessly. You play a game, using a Bluetooth headset for wireless voice chat. You get up and print a photo wirelessly from your phone, then add it wirelessly to your main computer album. Hell, your camera probably just eyefi's the photos straight to the internet, complete with geotagging, for displaying in your public gallery, which everyone gets alerted to by your social networking profile.

People don't like wires, regardless of their efficiency or security.

Of course, this is all divergent from my real problems with AR and the Wireless Matrix. All this silliness we're discussing is background fluff that can be waved away based on interpretation. And remember there haven't been sixty years of progress. In that time frame, the Matrix has crashed twice. Which, if you really think about it, would be catastrophic to our way of life, disrupting any active research and possibly putting back progress by decades as important research players failed from lack of capital, etc. There's also been a world wide plague, a near world war, etc.


The real problem I have with the Wireless Matrix is that it runs counter to everything the canon has established. Regardless of whether or not you can log on wirelessly, and I have no problem with that actually, it replaced the cyberdeck with the commlink. In this land of science fiction, we understood that people used cyberdecks and used datajacks because the direct neural interface with the Matrix was what gave deckers their edge. The established canon told us that people who just accessed the Matrix through tortoises (any kind of terminal or device that that did not feature direct sensory input/input with the brain) were incredibly slow compared to what could be accomplished with the cyberdeck. Even with 'trodes, you still sacrificed incredible speed in the Matrix. Non deckers could deck in the earlier versions of Shadowrun too. Many people just chose not to do so because obviously the understanding of the Matrix was less clear in the 90s before the Internet was everywhere. Even in 3e did they make it very clear that the Matrix should be a common usage thing for every character. Just that deckers were gods because they chose to interact directly with the Matrix and used ungodly expensive and specialized gear to gain that advantage. It took over twenty years to get the technology for cyberdecks down to the size of a small keyboard. In another twenty they reduced it to the size of a Blackberry and bypassed the need for the neural interface? At that point, it isn't like it matters if it makes sense by some twist of logical progression. it counteracts everything the game has set to be true. That's not progress, that's laziness on the part of 4e's writers in order to make the world conform to the new mechanic they wanted to implement.

I'm all about the expanded explanation of how the Matrix factors into a person's life. That's actually cool social commentary, even if I don't agree totally with it. FASA certainly never bothered to cover much, or expand on the average person's interaction with the Matrix. They just said everyone does. Which I guess is smart, because it leaves little to argue with. I mean, the game really didn't need an in depth treatise on the social networking and trendy tech of 2072. But it helps with giving an idea of the setting. But changing the way decking/hacking works fundamentally was just lame. Hacking is only slightly less clunky than it used to be, and makes a hell of a lot less sense. And while it clened up a lot of the sludge from earlier editions, it just replaced that sludge with new sludge to bog down the game. And not really in ways that altogether make sense, or improve the game.

Guys, maybe this has gone beyond 'advice for new players' and should be taken to a new/other thread. This way this can be a good resource for new players.

You're still arguing the if, and I'm bored of going back and forth on it. There have been advancements in technology/philosphy/law enforcement and at certain points, people have drawn a line and rejected them. I'm just saying I feel that at some point, people will draw the line and reject certain things that are accepted in 4e Shadowrun as normal. Besides, if history has shown anything over and over and over, it only takes a handful of clever people to rile up a whole lot of stupid ones. And now they have the Internet/Matrix to spread their information/misinformation. Even the most backwards, camel humping terrorists have figured out how to use TV and the Internet to their advantage.

It's true that 4e leveled the playing field more than might be good. It's as if they decided that Wires 1 was now standard for all people. Anyway, we're *way* off topic for this poor 'new player advice' thread.

I'm not arguing *any* 'if' at all, as I said already. And I think you made my point: if cave-dwellers and gangers are using the internet and cell phones, how can you possibly say people wouldn't use wireless even as much as *today*.

ADVICE TO NEW PLAYERS

1 - Some skills benefit from teamwork effects. For example, your options as a team increase if everyone has Infiltration, or Athletics.

1.1 - Scouting can unexpectedly turn into combat. Either send in expendable scouts -- drones -- or try to have the whole team able to scout together.

2 - Some skills do not benefit from teamwork. For example, Pilot (land vehicle). Distribute these among your team.

3 - Some skills are GM dependent. For example, Con. Will your GM allow your party's Face to do literally all the talking, or will other team members find themselves put on the spot from time to time? Same deal with Palming: can you be sure the opportunity to nab something useful or even vital will be presented to the exact right PC?

4 - Magic is awesome. Spirits are awesome. Study what they can do, because it's a lot to wrap your head around. If it seems overwhelming, focus on one type of Spirit at a time -- just pick one type and learn all of its Powers & optional Powers by heart. For your first spirit type, I suggest Air, Beast or Man.

5 - Technomancer? Sprites are awesome, study what they can do. If that's too complicated, try playing a regular Hacker at first. Just about everything you learn from playing a regular Hacker will be useful when playing a Technomancer, and you don't have to worry about Sprites just yet.

Speaking of magic and spirits being awesome, it might be preferable to simply avoid them at first. Use NPC/contact mages as necessary, and the GM can tone down magical opposition. Learn the rest of the game first, *then* learn the horrible lameness of Magicrun. Hehe.

Your opinion is valid, and may work for some groups, but in my humble opinion having magic integral to the system is a big part of what makes Shadowrun unique.

Yeah, magic is complicated. So is hacking. Both are very useful, flexible, and cool, though, and learning how much awesome stuff you can do with each of them is probably more important to getting a handle on Shadowrun than learning the difference between Explosive ammo and EX-EX ammo.

Cheers, -- N

1) Don't be afraid to spread points around when it comes to skills. Taking 100 BP and buying as many rank 1 skills as possible isn't a good idea though.
2) Always be open to advice. Stay true to your character concept, but don't shut out potentially good ideas.
3) Always listen to the GM for the GM is always right, is infallible, incapable of error. (I wish this was the case, but it's not and I just threw it in for laughs)
4) Be happy with what kind of character you made, but you should still have an eye towards advancement.

1. Never spend more than 30 seconds during play deciding on a mechanic; if you hit something you don't know, at most toss out a couple ideas, have the GM make a ruling and then move on. Make a note and find the real rules after the game. Nothing breaks pacing more than a half hour hunt through rulebooks

I did say 'at first', Nifft.

Mooncrow -

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Oh come now, while I do my best to point out rule inconsistencies that pop up, I still ultimately defer to your position.

On the unrelated topic of magical contact lenses, I present the ieee specturm which uses old tech. 8 years ago, I was working with a professor who had perfected a centrifugal technique for creating monomolecular polar films. If you think 100 µm is thin, you're still not thinking small enough. I see variable magnification and such as a potential option even for something that small.

But I still have know idea what "Image enhancement" is supposed to mean. Isn't that a software-side tech?

Yes. Everything's digital, including that.

Heya,

I'm a new player with some input

To be honest, I think emphasis on a proper GM direction should be given as well.

The variety of original problems I've had in my original group were based off the GM essentially telling us that all the players wouldn't necessarily be teaming up on a long run and would be competing on many levels of the story. That immediately set us off to go as independent as possible, and often to actively work against each other's goals.

A lot of various problems can be worked out in a group (i.e. non-team players, character setup ignorance, etc) but if the GM isn't prepared to teach and encourage properly it's a doomed effort form the get go.



All that being said, I liked the revised list of gear/stats/concepts for new characters to focus in on. For a new player especially, I definitely think that the broader focus of 1-2 points in a lot of skills i preferable over specialization. New players will usually have problems understanding how their skills will be used, so emphasizing broad use of skills and basic "requirements" for gear and such will be very helpful to prevent a lot of repeat character creation sessions.

Once a couple of missions have gone by and both the GM and players are getting a better feel for the game and each other working towards a specialization will be more feasible. It's easier to learn a lot of game concepts if a rookie player at least gets a taste for a variety of skill uses, rather than not being able to do much a lot of the time so they only really get into specific circumstances.


Did enjoy reading up on the future technology discussions. As a lot of my personal background is along sch future developments I think it's pretty interesting to see what people think the direction is. Still, would've rather had more "rookie advice" talk