DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODGE!!!

In order to use a simple/complex action at another time, other than on your IP, you need to have it held. So, lets say Slowguy is the last guy in the turn to go, and it hasnt reached his turn yet, he cant stop fastGuy by shooting him in advance, he could, however, use a free action to yell "FastGuy coming in, 10 o'clock" over the teams com.

Who's inventing anythink, moving your full speed takes a full combat turn, so quite obviously you can't take your action after that as the combat turn is over.

There is a limit on how many free actions you can take. Beyond that, there's very little you can accomplish with a free action. Your simple/complex actions were how often you could do something useful.

Also, I don't know what you mean by "PBEM", but the basics went something like this: in both SR 1 and 2, you used a countdown style of initiative. You went from fastest to slowest, declaring and resolving actions in that order. The catch was, every time you went, you subtracted a number from your initiative score (7 in 1e, 10 in 2e) and went again on the new count. So, if you were playing SR2 and got an initiative of 34, you went on 34, 24, 14, and 4. The problem with this system was that fast characters dominated the entire combat, and slower characters often had their players wandering off. The combat would frequently be over long before mages and deckers ever got their turn.

In SR3, the concept of the "pass" was introduced. So, if you rolled an initiative of 34, you still subtracted 10 after your first action, and that would be your initiative for the second pass. You kept going until everyone was out of initiative. This meant that slower characters would be able to act in the first pass, they just tended to wander off after their turn was done. Some people here didn't like it for other reasons that I can't recall; you'd have to ask them.

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This is my preffered way to do things, except your numbers are a bit off. There's a definite rules hardcap on 4 meatspace IPs.

I'd also like to point out that shadowrun uses distances in Meters. A human movement rate divided by 4 passes is still 16 feet covered.
When you stop to think about it, its damn impressive distance covered in 0.75 seconds(3 second combat turn / 4 passes) from standing still to running.

If you think that makes for crap game play, then you need to reexamine the distances you use in your fight scenes. No, really. See next quote



For the record, 20 meters is 65 feet. This type of thing is pretty much the reason its necessary to tone movement back down to much more sane, reasonable levels. There's a difference between diving for cover behind a bar or table, and diving across the entire basketball court to take cover. (google tells me its 50' width, and either 84 or 94' depending on highschool/college or professional courts)


Taking a system with dynamic movement rates and turning them into flat movement rates just makes SENSE. Every other game system out there uses that system:
D&D 3.5? 30 feet per turn. (and lots of ways to increase it, most of which involve adding 5 or 10) 6 second turns.
AD&D/2e: Notable because each combat turn was a -minute- of combat, with a series of assumed attacks, counters, and parries between the dice rolling. It had fractional -attacks-, in that fast fighters would occasionally carry a strike over to the next turn, but NOT fractional movement.
Dark heresy? A little more complex, but still incredibly easy to calculate. Take your agility, divide it by 10, drop any fraction. Thats your Half Move speed in meters. Double if full moving, triple if charging, x6 if running. (for an average dude that breaks down to 3/6/9/18). This system uses 5 second combat turns.

The common theme here is: They all have flat values.

Shadowrun 4th? Its the only system where figuring out how far you go when you want to get away from the bad guys has the following steps:
Look up your movespeed based on your metatype
realize that its per TURN, and go 'oh wait, i can only take part of it now'
ask all the other players and the GM how fast ALL of the combatants are, and then divide that distance by 1 to 4, and wonder if .6666 repeating meters puts your outside of melee range or not.
Oh, and NOW you get to move.

Yeah, its just BAD rules fu.

Well rigging a drone is a matrix action and thus uses matrix iniative and IP:s, meaning a drone can have 5 meat IP:s.

Thats an example of an extreme edge case in rules. Its one very specific example that happens to break the basic system, but the problem really isn't drones so much as the bad movement rules themselves

Besides, you lose 1 complex action each turn rigging, so its effectively 4.

I'm pretty sure the simsense accelerator was introduced just so the hacker wouldn't go 'wait, why can't i be as fast as the sammy?'

Either way, 4 vs 5ips doesn't really matter. The total rate of movement within a turn for all parties concerned doesn't change.

Assuming 5 ips, however, does make movement rate dividing math a lot simpler, because it gets rid of a lot of fractions.

You do not lose an Action to control the Drone as it is not mandatory... You can choose not to [control the drone] and just take the penalty of making a Crash test. Any competant rigger will pass that with room to spare.

And yes, dividing by 5 works out great for every one except the Dwarf.

I'm going to say what I said elsewhere: just abstract it.

If a player suddenly wants extreme details, ask him what he wants to do. Let's say he wants to find the best cover possible. You, as GM, simply decide that cover is in reach (no action necessary), slightly out of reach (Dive for it! Complex or simple action), or out of reach (You can't get there this pass). Modify as needed for your own group, of course. Rather than trying to plot out exact distances and movement rates using a slide rule, just find out what their objectives are and tell them how to accomplish it. If it takes some specifics, express it in complex/simple actions rather than exact distances. As long as you keep the action flowing, no one will care.

I agree: even if you're using exact movement distances, I've rarely seen a SR GM give exact *terrain* distances.

I've done before running the SR equivalent of a dungeon delve. The map I made had 1"= 2 meters. What I found was that the distance moved in each IP was minimal at best unless you were running. Most combats took less than 2 combat turns-I even had one guy complain that he felt like he was moving too slow until I reminded him it was a 3 second combat turn and he had 3 IP.

Also in general:
1. Spirits and Mind control are funky.
2. Fighting in a building usually results in it being short range.
3. Melee does happen.
4. Drones are deadly.
5. Grenades or missles in an enclosed space=chunky salsa.

If you have 25 movement, across 4 passes, and there is cover 8 meters away, you are going to get shot at. While you can move 8 meters in one pass, that movement happens spread throughout the pass, not instantly on your turn. You arent actually behind that cover until the start of your next initiative, so anyone taking a turn would have a chance to shoot at you.

Also, if they had a held action, they could shoot at you even if you were jumping toward cover 1 meter away.