Instead of being an ass, why don't you just keep in mind that sometimes misreading is possible? How about people disregard everything you say for your views which basically sound like "do what you can to screw your players"?

I don't really see how this affects the ease of converting the old system over. I mean, I get that you feel it is harder to play by those rules, but OTOH, I do recall having to swap programs in and out often in the old days. Granted, not to the severity seen here, but it still doesn't seem like that big of a deal except for combat situations when you are most likely to need multiple utilities up and running at once.

My point is more along the lines that, in the old modules, you know what the purpose of a given system is in terms of the story's needs and how the architecture is set up. It isn't that hard to use the old information and compare it to the new charts without it being too much of a headache. You don't need to redesign the entire thing, and you can probably make the changes on the fly once you've pulled it off a few times.

Dragon Hunt, BTW, is the adventure with the dragon and the datajack. IIRC, a recurring rival runner group either made its first or second appearance in that one.

It may have to do with the fact that you a) tend to come across as not very polite yourself, b) tend to full quote everything (done for emphasis here), even when this is not remotely necessary and c) have done this 'misreading' not once but several times, making (based on that) a lot of just plain wrong statements.
No offense meant here, just stating some of my observations.

It would probably take some GM ruling, but there is the possibility of using the Hardware skill to 'tweak' a hitcher jack or two in such a way so as to 'daisy chain' couple of extra decks (once the memory upgrade rules are put out by CanRay), in such a way that you use the memory on those as 'backups' to run more at one time.

Hitcher jacks don't communicate with other computers in any way. There may be some way to set up some sort of shared processing thing, but that's making big assumptions about how magical notcomputers work, and it's almost certainly something you aren't going to do with a glorified headphone jack.

Bahhh... Just re-tweak Decks to run like Skillwires do.
Add Program Options and viola, done.

Normally, no, they don't. That's what the suggestion of using the Hardware skill to modify a hitcher jack or two comes in. Not saying it'd necessarily be easy, but it could be a possible answer to the "problem" that makes use of a skill the Decker most likely already has.

Using hardware to add some kind of port could potentially make sense, but modifying a hitcher jack port seriously doesn't make sense in any way. You are both redefining what it connects to and redefining what WAY that connection goes, which means it might as well not have been a hitcher jack to begin with. But parallel processing with cyberdecks is not really a particularly viable thing actual play in any case to solve a problem that can be more elegantly solved with other rules that would involve less work.

Agreed that it could become rather cumbersome, but I was trying to come up with something other than what I had previously misread it to be (just number of programs equal to Memory rating), as I was afraid that people would just shout "overpowered" at it.

I'm kind of with Tymeaus. Treat it like skillwires. 2xrating in total program ratings loaded at one time. Lets you have more than one decent utility at a time, but still creates a tradeoff of quality vs quantity.

Might just be best to go with your earlier misread and use the memory rating for number of programs. Simple houserule FTW.

It's what I'm gonna do. May be a misread, but it works

That should never happen, me thinks you need to rethink your backup strategy!

For example I have the following
working folder on raid 1 array that I always work from
shadow copies on (its a windows server)
usb backup drive that takes a backup of the folder every 12 hours
cloud backup that takes a backup of the folder every night

But im always working from the same files, the backup process is automated.

Guys.. I think this is the wrong way to go about this. The book hasn't even hit paper & store shelves yet and you're already discussing house rules as a necessity!!! That is just wrong. The first thing I do is extend to Canray the benefit of a doubt... that I have screwed up my reading somehow. While I enjoy arguing rules on the forum out of game, in game I prefer to try and stick to RAW and figure out how it works and how it doesn't.


Have any of you tried to work your way through any of the nodes in published material from the time using the rules AS WRITTEN? Until you have, any talk of house rules is premature. (I'm not hostile to house rules, but only after I've actually tried to make the rules work, the point of published rules is to keep everyone playing roughly the same game). But I'm seriously looking for feedback from others, especially those who actively played deckers 20 years ago. Whether my suspicians and attempts at playtesting this are right or wrong.

By the same rules you can't upgrade the memory, IO, or MCPC of a cyberdeck. Only double the storage. (even then... there's a problem because storage sizes changed... I think all paydata sizes need divided by 5 when converting. The amount of anything you can store per Mp needs quintupled. Kudos that they caught this on the Camera in the equipment section 5s for 1Mp). When porting... that much is easy to do at least. Though still it strikes me as an unneccesary complication over just keeping Mp sizes and rates the same.


In terms of houserules (though I think this is premature):
I think TJ's suggestion is the most workable. Treat it like skillwires. Simple straightforward, well understood and effective. (though unwired program options become rather OP then). Rating not higher than memory, but up to 2x memory in ratings.


I see All4Biggy's suggestion as complete drek, it completely disregards any of the SR1 history and limitations. TJ's at least approximates how many programs you could generally keep loaded at once and in roughly the same ratings. All4biggy's is no different than his assertion that you can't make a playable character for less than 1000 karma. It's badly OP... you end up with having 6 rating 6 programs loaded at once! (that would have taken 360Mp of storage on the old rules on decks which had 100 storage! 3x-4x the amount you're supposed to be able to keep loaded). Effectively, you don't even need to pick and choose or make any hard choices... you can keep a ton of stuff loaded at once and swap out this and that as needed. It also places no limitation on the highest rating code you can run, rating 1.. you can run a single rating 6 program no problem!

The loud voices and the insults are scaring me.

They shouldn't, CanRay. This is an internet argument and those are serious bzns.
BUT. Don't let that keep you from further providing quality work. Everyone can make mistakes and those can be adressed. Every author needs a certain disconnect between what people on the internet want or don't want or don't like. It doesn't make you a bad person if you disregard insults or even suggestions. Sane people will realize that there is a ratio behind what an author writes, even if they don't happen to like it

That it hasn't reached print publication yet is fairly irrelevant, it's the product that we were sold, and the product that we have to work with. It's not wrong of us to implement house rules at this early stage for something that is clearly broken or unusable. The memory rating limit is something that can work on it's own, but it seems low to me, given what could be kept in memory in previous editions. It increases the difficulty curve vs things that use twice their rating when you are only able to reliably run 2s and 3s for your programs, which might be the intent, don't know, or just reloading your programs and wasting actions constantly. Really, it's the character creation elements that need house rules since I doubt we'll ever see official help in this regard. You are welcome to play it as it is written, but that's not how I want to play it, and giving CGL the benefit of the doubt and waiting doesn't seem like the kind of thing I should be expected to do AFTER paying them my money.

Heh, I totally agree that <1000 karma is pretty unplayable. 500 BP is pretty standard at our table and 400 point characters (and availability restrictions) are for things like street-level campaigns. This isn't a game where you gain a level every other session, so you either provide more points to build with or else you have to be lucky enough to have a Monty for a GM, willing to ignore the super-slow progression of karma in favor of something that at least lets you feel like you're progressing.

And yeah, my very first character, Data Skater, was a decker, and we're talking SR1, but I don't know what sorts of feedback you're looking for. I glanced at the new rules and found them easy to relate to, but distinctly different all the same. What was once a headache is now streamlined. I think, however, you're in it for purity. Well, those days are over: Starbuck isn't a guy anymore, Ponies are cool, and Transformers were ruined by Bay.

Howso Mordant?

Which elements of character creation do you see a problem with? The only thing I can think of is under old editions priority A resources wasn't uncommon for street sammies and deckers.


Personally, I don't have a problem with early PDF release... especially if they use it as an opportunity to fix things before it goes to the printer. SR4a went through a lot of that and it came out pretty well I think. I agree, that things aren't getting proofread and playtested very well lately. That would be my biggest problem with Mr Hardy lately.


Speedwraith:
750karma at 5x costs produces roughly 450-500BP characters. Normally much better rounded charactesr than BP does since BP does too much to punish people for not min-maxing. 1000 karma is more like 650-700. I broke down the costs on the other forum for one of All4's 'balanced' 1000karma character. I stopped when I reached over 600BP and didn't feel like itemizing equipment costs.

The problem is adventures and such aren't written for characters that advanced. And it's boring when everyone is a fully fledged jack of all trades with the same skills. Once you hit a certain amount... things start looking cookie cutter.

As far as the second bit. I'm after playability. Not after purity or needless complexity. But throughout the entire 2050 bit they've gone for a lot of purity I noticed. Everything from grounding, dikote, caster capabilities, and similar on up. I wouldn't have said anything if I thought it was merely a matter of flavor, but as written they strike me as unplayable. It's not a matter of making hard choices it's a matter of making impossible choices. Most of the programs (like shield and mirror, are practically useless because you can't load them at the same time as a meaningful combat utility).

I don't want to speak for Mordant, but yeah, resources are stretched more thin than a lot of folks believe they should be. We're tossing around doing 10k/1BP or twice the listed amount in the priority chart (playing 2050 we're thinking of using the priority system, even if it is easy to have a human magician with maxed magic and edge...).

Resources issues is the big one. I have a few quibbles that probably aren't germane to anybody else's games so I won't really expound upon them. Hardy has made it clear that he thinks that its perfectly fine for deckers, sams and riggers to be grossly underfunded at the start and mages should wipe the floor with everyone, but I don't really care for that. Double resources seems the easiest fix. Not necessarily the best solution, but the sweet spot for simulating the amount of investment that the character has made and the range of ability that an sr1/2 cool million nuyen would buy is acutally a combination of making 1 bp equal between 5 and 10 thousand and raising the spendable cap somewhat, and that doesn't make for easy or fun math, so I'm not inclined to pursue it.

The runner group made a second appearance, the runner group's leader, Blackwing, made his second. That particular elven street samurai was among the very first of Shadowrun's recurring NPCs (especially as an antagonist).

And he has shown up again, in a few recent adventures.

I can see what you mean Mordant. Though I'm completely unfamiliar with any of JMHardy's professed views on the subject.

Even with the higher spending cap. You still run into availability problems and run out of things to spend on barring a large investment in restricted gear qualities. Also generally I've found in play it's not that hard to save up enough to get your hands on new cyber/bio. While karma tends to be very slow in coming making it feel like magical progress is slow as all get up.

My recollection was that magicians under SR1-3 were far more powerful than starting magicians in SR4. That's one thing I do credit the system with better balance.

The other thing is starting as a 2070's decker has some really low equipment costs as I recall. Encephalon, pushed, maybe a full cyberarm (to slot a nanohive later, internal commlink, sim module, etc.). One of the criticisms is it's so very cheap to start with a good commlink and a full load of high rating programs. Though I can see how this is a potential problem given the 2050's decker equipment costs.

Bouncing numbers around my head... more resources hurts straight adepts even more (unless they go the cyber-adept route) and also hurts technomancers somewhat. Techno is pretty hard to make work as well. Mages don't care either way, and I don't see this really changing much against them. As it stands in SR4, if the mage gets the drop... the sammy is toast... and if the sammy gets the drop the mage is toast (barring possession nonsense).

Technos aren't a consideration. And with default SR4 money and 2050 prices, adepts are stronger than sams. There's a sweet spot where you don't have everything you'll ever want, but you have enough to make it feel like you have what you need. 500k can get fairly approximate to that although there are a few wonky things, like 50BP not being the same depth of investment as priority A, but the way attributes work in point buy, it wouldn't be able to be reflected. Could balance it better with a priority system, but SR4's priority system has some issues.

Oh, I misunderstood. I thought you were talking in general and not specifically to 2050. That's the only reason I brought up technos. I haven't looked much at the new equipment costs... so looking now.


Actually the more I look at it... the more I'm half realizing what you're saying and the more I'm seeing how screwed up the cyber/bio costs are. With 500k... I have a hard time seeing what cyber is actually desirable. Though to be fair most of these cost problems go the whole way back to Shadowtech. At least in 2070 cybercosts have gone way down while bio hasn't budged much at all. (even if the availability went way up). Though I guess you could go cheap and higher essence by grabbing both a VCR-1, and WR-1 since they seemingly stack.


Found another one...
Retinal Duplication: Use it's rating against retinal scanners. No rating is given nor are multiple prices for multiple ratings given.

Cybereyes are done rather well I think. The limited capacity makes picking 4 capacity worth of mods a tough pick.


Also found costs for a program carrier in the original book. Since the book pretty much copies verbatim most costs, I'd be shocked if this one wasn't errataed to be included at the same.
Program Carrier 0.2 essence cyber $25000

I always preferred the 10 point priority system:

A=4
B=3
C=2
D=1
E=0

You spent 10 points over all categories.

Didn't he also appear as Bloodwing in one adventure? A misprint or miscommunication between writers I assume.

They are scaring me too. Means I have to start paying attention to them. Which is tedious and not at all entertaining. And I may have to get out ban hammers.

Yes, in a few places (not consistently) throughout Demon in a Bottle, his first appearance, they called him "Bloodwing" instead of "Blackwing."

Pssst. "Bottled Demon". Demon in a Bottle is an Iron Man story.

Bull

It's also another name for hooch. I don't know why, really. Beer is proof $Deity loves us and wants us to be happy, and whiskey has kept the Irish from taking over the world.

That's what I get for posting while also watching Spanish-language versions of movies. My phrasing's just all tangled up.

And anyways, BAH. Y'all knew what I meant.

Best module ever. My coyote shaman may or may not have ended up with a few side effects from that one.

The first group I ran with it wound up taking an orbital flight, waiting until they were out of the manasphere, then opened the darn thing. *VWOOP* no more magical bigbad.

I shook my fist so very, very hard.

Hey, maybe he just changed names.

Also, Wakshaani, I love your runners.

Thank you! Some of them need some help, but the majority are ones I'm happy with, especially the First Seven, but the Corporate Secretary-tunred-Vampire was a heck of a challenge that I wanted to., uh, sink my teeth into. (ouch) One of those things that I can keep on hand for when people get upset over concepts that can't be done. MOST of the 320 crew is done with just the core book, since the 'splats' give you more options ... but they also give you WAY more options. It can be hard to0 work with such a large selection.

So, any more word on dead tree format? I've heard around Gencon, but that starts in about 10 days, and it hasn't even appeared on Amazon at all yet. Preorder or anything.

Amazon doesn't sell CGL product directly. Anything that shows up there is showing up through a secondary seller.

Right now the plan is to have some early copies for Gen Con, and then full retail release after once the rest of the books come in. When that will be, I can't say. That's not my area, so I don't know. But generally speaking it's usually at least 2 months between PDF release and Street Date.

Bull

Printer allowing.

I wait with baited breath for the solution to the Matrix issues (utilities prices, clarification as to how the memory works on cyberdecks) but I wanted to add that since I just finished the gear section... major kudos to whoever wrote that section, the comments for the weapons and gear were fragging awesome. Well done.

Bought the book yesterday, skimmed through it quickly. At first glance, the colors are a little too vivid for me, but other than that the illustrations aren't too bad looking.

As for the contents, I'm a bit skeptical.

First chapter:
- The first part of the first chapter is mostly about Seattle, even if the book is supposed to let people play at Seattle, Chicago and Hong-Kong. And there's a part about Seattle later, so having things about Seattle here already is a bit strange. As for the elements inside, some are indeed specific to 2050, but most of them aren't very different from what you have in 2070. It should have insisted more on differences in ambiance and gameplay. For example, it does say that there are gangs in AAA neighborhood but it doesn't explain how they can exist and how they act. It says there are many gangs, but it doesn't go in details on the reasons behind this.
- The second part, about celebrities, is pretty interesting since many SR1 and SR2 scenarios were about medias and celebrities (a theme that's pretty important in 80's cyberpunk). Too bad there's nothing about that emphasis on medias to explain this.
- The third part, about how to deal with the Lone Star, is interesting, and I can't help but think it would have been better in a "Security troops and procedures" PDF. There's nothing really specific to the 2050s here, except maybe in some details.

Second chapter:
- I've only read Hong-Kong, since I'm planning on making a campaign set in Hong-Kong in 2047. Nothing shocking, it fits with what's said in Runner Havens, with some additional elements that were missing (such as what has become of the new territories and how is the border with Shenzhen) and are well handled. But it lacks some context information (we're right after the second mass arrival of refugees) and atmosphere.

Third chapter:
- Run categories, with examples. I like the format and some ideas are pretty cool, but many of these could equally fit in 2070.

Short story: Err, what is it doing here, in the middle of the book?

Fourth chapter:
- Archetypes: I haven't payed attention to the stats, but the descriptions are fun. It's missing a native american character and the iconic elf decker, though.

Fifth chapter:
- Life in the 50s: Finally! It should have been put before in the book, in my opinion. It's pretty good, but also too short. To me, this should be one of the main part of the book: explaining how life (and consequently, shadowrunning) is different in the 50s.

Sixth chapter:
- Magic: Split between traditions are back (and so is grounding). Adding budhism and wuxing with specific rules is a nice idea for those who play in Hong-Kong. I haven't looked at details in the rules, but the basic split between shaman and hermetics seems correct.

Seventh chapter:
- Matrix: The return of cyberdecks, MPCP, CPU-SPU-I/O-SN and so on. Looks like it has been integrated well with the SR4A skills and matrix actions. Once again I haven't looked in details but it seems to be pretty clear (which shouldn't have been very easy to pull off). It just brings back the drawback of too long Matrix scenes where the rest of the group orders pizza.

Eigth chapter:
- Gear: Pretty much gear stats from SR4A with prices from SR1 (from what I can tell, I didn't have the SR1 book with me to check) and funny new comments. Nice to have a clear list of what's available in 2050. The full listing might feel redundant with the existing books, but it's better than having to hunt each piece of equipement in the 2070s books. The biggest problem is the price of the cyberware: between 3 and 5 times the price in SR4A, which means that streetsamurai will be far less powerful, while adepts and mages are still as powerful (maybe a little less for mages, but only a little). Surprisingly, bioware is only 1.5 times more expensive.

In conclusion:
Nothing extraordinary. I can't help but feel that it's not what is should have been. The 50s don't feel really different from the 70s, apart from technological differences. I guess it should have had more tips and tricks on how to get that 80s cyberpunk feel, on how to explain, push for and handle a more pink mohawk playstyle and many other such things.

It wasn't easy. However, the Decker has 3 IP that goes with the same initiative as the rest of the group, so you can have them doing other things. This gets important when trying for Paydata while the rest of the group fights (Like on the SR1/2 and SR2050 covers.).

Or, you know, laying bets when the Decker shows what's happening on the roll-out screen.

Deckers are one of the reasons I really like the older editions, despite never playing them (The older editions, that is). Magicians just get born lucky, and Street Sams engage in a level of dedication most would never be willing to go into, but actual *decking* takes intelligence and skill. In 4th, I kind of feel like any idiot with a decent commlink will have a decent chance to do pretty well on the `trix. Thankfully, 3050 seems to go back to the older style of having Deckers be as prized and valuable as the rest of the archetypes.

Eh, I am not sure I'm seeing much difference between 3E deckers and 4E hackers here. Deckers needed specific skills - hackers need specific skills. Deckers used augmentation to gain an edge - hackers do, as well. How are they so different?

Decker are....pinched in the Ass ?(in den Arsch gekniffen)...they're FUBAR when they Loose their 1 Mio ¥ Deck
a Hacker that looses his 50.000 ¥ Comlink could buy another one

HokaHey
Medicineman

You did notice that the general cost level for equipment dropped in SR4?

Drone Factories really took off after Crash 2.0, as well as the development of the NanoManufacturing. Really cut down on costs, which were then passed onto the consumer to ensure they consume MORE.

Häh ?
Of course I did !
What You want to tell me ?

He who dances with a ?
Medicineman

You can't compare the price of a 1,000,000 cyberdeck of SR3 with a 5,000 of SR4 without taking in account that equipment prices in general dropped in SR4. It's all about proportion and scaling.

OK,

But I can compare the Importance of Equipment
If the Decker looses his Deck he's .....History, a Hacker could start again if He'd loose his comlink.
one more reason why the Resources of SR3 where ...sub-optimal
but this is not the Thread for comparing SR3 with SR4
thats the other Thread

with the right Dance in the right Threat
Medicineman