@ravensmuse:
I agree that you don't need to force Shadowrun back into the 80s. I also agree that you now have many different playstyles and that cutting them back to only one "true" style would be detrimental to the game and players.

But at the same time I think that having a generic "50 years in the future with magic" game is detrimental to all players as well. As I said earlier, it's like nutrisoy. Nearly everyone will eat it and they can add the flavor they want, but they'll rather have the real deal. Especially now that we have many different freelancer who all have their own conflicting vision of the game and a line developer who doesn't want to force his own vision.

That's why I think Shadowrun would benefit from having a few clean cut "flavors". You could have a "80s cyberpunk" line set in 2050, a "post-cyberpunk" line set in 2060 and a "future urban fantasy" line set in 2070. All would use the same basic ruleset with a few tweaks (humanity loss in the 80s version for example) but would have different fluff and feel.

@ ravensmuse

your taking a sorta extreme view, the fact that the orignial Seattle Source book says there is acid rain most days and red smog when it doesn't rain (get out your breath mask) i would put in the fluff catagory but if a GM uses said fluff you could have gonzo super human troll strippers from mars and still hear the players say "man rain again, its going to ruin my new boots"

Not to mention Lesbian Elf Stripper Ninjas and Bubba The Love Troll.

If there is one thing that Shadowrun (and life in general) has taught me over the decades: the world changes. It changes fast, and hard, and always in extreme ways. I've been around SR since the beginning, and there is a part of me that would love to return to the '50s, but most of me says that there is no looking back...

Of course, I'd be interested if for no other reason than to see how decking would be handled under the current rules.

Knowing some of the personalities, I bet they have Bull on it.

His character still has his Cyberdeck after all.

You never know when you're gonna need something that can interface with that old-school Fuchi node you dug up in the basement of a building that hasn't seen use since before the Crash... Or just an excuse to walk into the Cathode Glow.


Honestly, I think it might be a good way to get SR4 stats for a lot of things that might have survived from the 2050s to the 2070s in working order that your characters might have, such as an old car or an original Ares Predator or something.

Hopefully they will remember to involve the playtesters and proofreaders this time.

*snort*

...you would have loved my RIS campaign. One team got totally freaked by just how dystopic the setting in the Balkans was.

...and London isn't a playground either.

It's too bad we are several hundred miles apart.

---

...as to the return to 2050.

Been a longtime player since 1ed. Tried 4th in the early days and ended up going back to 3rd as I thought the system and setting had lost its original "edginess".

Personally I thought things were much grittier back in the early days than now. I miss the strong presence of the NAN and Native American influences that permeated the setting.

The TT was a mysterious and scary place.

Wireless may be SOTA in RL these days, but finding a jack point and decking in with your custom Kraftwerk had a "cool factor" that I felt made the game more enjoyable.

Riggers were masters of the highways, streets, and skies.

...and Pink Mohawks rocked!

I agree that to make this work they need to develop a stronger dichotomy between Hermetics and Shamans than the current system has.

Will be interesting to see what comes of this.

I think the 2050 book is a cool way of providing SR4 stats for the gear, and people from earlier products. Having the stats for a Pred Ii, The Professor etc in the format for the new game is going to make life easier for playing through the old stuff with the 'easier' rules. It's a good option for GM's and Players.

Plus if it brings in Players from Shadowrun Returns then that's not a bad thing.

As for the direction/changes in the game- well I figure the game had to change. Cyberpunk was a product of its time and is kinda played out as most of the factors that made it work are gone. Like James Bond had to be reinvented post Cold War so Shadowrun had its Crash and reinvention to survive.

Let's hope they bring in some of the old writers to get the feel of the book right, and do their best to make the SR4 ruleset fit that feel!

On the topic of Wireless security.

The company i work for has infrastructure thats added together only when its absence is obviously costing the copany alot of money. I assembled 90% of it from second hand gear and scrap. Anybody willing to setup a machine within wireless range could mac address spoof their way in, in which case they would find that the email server our MBA boss set up and refuses to replace, requires passwords to be sent in plain text across the network, and BAM, they have everything.

On the other hand, one of our clients, a megacorp come SR time, is the complete opposite. Digital certificates for wifi access, all network traffic is encrypted with 6 hour rotating passwords. Seperate physical networks for important data. It is a horrendous process for even employees to gain access.

Now anonymous and lulzsec show up in the media for "hacking" all the time. But what they do is the same as defacing an AR node, or finding data that some wageslave accidentally made public facing. Very little actual intrusion occurs into corporate networks.

Let's hope that they actually pay them this time.

I am TOTALLY looking forward to this. I really miss the old school, but am really impressed at 4e mechanics. Sure, there's a LOT of bugs to work out, but trying to please everyone all the time is why games go bad (ref: World of Warcraft. 'Nuff sed.)

I dunno, 11 million people paying 15 bucks a month seems like a pretty dang product to me, especially if I'm the guy raking in the cash.

What I'd like them to do yet I know they wont is use this as an opportunity to test a bunch of rules for the next edition which will be rolling along eventually. While yeah things were improved in some areas in 4e, a lot of things like in any system don't work well. With 5+ years under people have a better idea of things that don't work at all, don;t work as intended, are unbalanced etc.

Ask themselves.

1. Is the die system working as intended or does it have flaws.
a: do bonus dice work how you want when splitting pools
b: Is TN 5 the right choice for the TN
C do you want attributes to have as profound of an effect on the dice pool as they currently do.
D: Do you want skill caps/do skills have a profound enough effect on the dice pool.
e. things i am not thinking of.

2. The matrix is it working as intended.
a: should attributes do more here to allow it to blend with the system as a whole.
b are there too many, too few steps to hack a node
c: are there too many/few matrix actions
d: is is clear enough
e: ease of use, is it there yet.
f: encryption do you want it to actually do something others than slow you a CT
D : should data search take out the point of most contacts.

3. Magic is it working as intended
a: Spirits, too powerful/useful?
b: overcasting system is it working as intended?
c: Drain is it too much, too little, just right?
d: indirect spells do you want that high of a drain tax?
e: adept powers, are the standards like reflex powers too expensive
f: do you want to rules motivate chrome adepts as the best mechanical choice for adepts, or motivate keeping magic pure, or try to make it a hard choice?

4. Combat: Working as intended?
a. Do you want to make melee bad if not uber focused in it and generally still inferior to guns when you do?
b: stick and shock is it working right?
c. shooting barriers 2 dv per bullet, really?

5: Skills: working correctly?
: Breakdown of skills is it done well? Stealth for example do you really need infiltration, shadowing and disguise when they all basically mean I move around without being detected. That seems more like one skill and a specialization system to me.
2. Do we want groups to cost 10 and individual skills cost 4 to increase?

etc.

Yeah not everyone agrees on what is wrong, but it seems like a good opportunity to try stuff out before they set it in stone in 5e.

But if CGL made 5E, then we'd have to make SR2050 5E!

5E2050?