What i mostly take from the announcement is that this appears to be a bit more akin to the SR4 -> SR4a only a bit more extensive. That's my best guess. I really don't expect much more than something similar to a SR2 -> 3 type conversion... It seems that the matrix is finally going to get a lot of the attention it deserves rather than being a generic add-on to everything... (really wireless cyberlimbs... how can that not be a problem...)

That said. I'm not upset at all with the timing of a new edition... SR4th has been kicking for a good 8 years. It's about time for a 'garbage collection' and cleanup. My only problem is I don't have confidence that jmhardy as editor-in-chief is the one to do this (recent products have shown a lack of playtesting, poor editing quality... and I'm not one to nitpick grammar for the most part except as it affects rules ambiguity). That said... I'm not certain who'd replace him either...

I'll wait to see more... it'll be nice to see if they reach out to the player community at all for expanded playtesting at the least. I've seen Fantasy flight do this with Star Wars and some other games... and it seems to be a more positive experience. Especially if it gets the FLGS's involved a bit more... But that's a lot more work... as it requires someone to aggregate the rules and reports a bit more.

Do you at least get to officially complain that "this sentence is a wreck", so editors might take an extra look at it?


I'm hoping that it means gear will be more modular, so they can just print a list of names and what mods they have to differ them from baseline options. Would be nice to just have a way to put new drones, guns, etc. together.

Cyberlimbs use DNI. They might use wireless to get firmware updates, exactly like things work in RL for secure devices.

Except Fatum... that they use DNI and wireless... and make no difference between them. So the rules don't support your POV that wireless ONLY does firmware... and even if they do only do firmware... fine i use the wireless to shove in new firmware which disables DNI and only allows for wireless control.

Which is how you run into hackers trying to break into peoples limbs and beating them to death with their own fist... Major Kusanagi Ghost in the Shell style.

The rules do not say differently... that's you putting your own limited view on the rules and ignoring aspects of them you don't like.

Yes and no. There's proofreader comments that track what changes we'd like to make. It's supposed to be solely for related comments, but I tend to get sarcastic about some of the things I encounter. I can't be a brutal as an editor should be, but I've had no difficulty getting my point across. I also can't rewrite a sentence, I can only make grammatical and punctuation changes. Still, if something is a total wreck, I can make a suggestion mixed with a lot of sarcasm and let the editor run with it.

All KINDS of signed paperwork says that the rules people aren't gonna say a thing in THAT regard until and unless Jason Hardy and the higher-ups give a sayso.

That's a darn good question, however!

Where can I find these hacks?

This is what altavista yields on World of Shadows: (Look for Jul 5th)

I would have put these with my post, but I'm mostly on my phone now so linking is kind of hard

Shadowguard: http://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2010/04/mou...n-hack.html?m=1 (requires Mouseguard)

Shadowhack: http://sentientgames.files.wordpress.com/2.../shadowhack.pdf (.pdf link)

World of Shadows: http://sentientgames.wordpress.com/2012/07...rld-of-shadows/ (requires Dungeon World / World of Dungeons)

Thanks a lot!

Yeah, I figured it would be a little while before we get anything concrete, but I WANT concrete before I'll get excited about the new edition.


Welcome! Let me know if you try them out - I really want to get Mouseguard (in part because of the hack) and I haven't had an opportunity to run Old School Hack for my group sometime.

The way I see it, this could go to two extremes

Miserable Clusterfuck <-------------------------------------------------------------------------> Fragging Awesome.

Unfortunately, I have my reservations. I doubt it will go wholeheartedly to one side or the other, but given CGL's, ahem, spotted track record (No, I haven't forgiven you for the seaside of Bogota. Nobody ever will,) I suspect the answer may lie rather closer to Miserable Clusterfuck than Fragging Awesome.

Compounding the potential clusterfuck is that they're evidently not taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to the launch of a new edition, but seem to be simultaneously attempting to launch different products the same time.


A collectible card game!? What, was Magic: the Addiction dethroned from its pedestal as the god-emperor of all CCGs against which newcomers are doomed to an inevitable slide into profitability and failure while I wasn't looking?

Oh, except you've got a gimmick in the mix: doubling the required number of players. So you're combining the booster-pack-hunting financial blackhole (or rather, a doomed attempt at remaking the black-hole which is doomed to failure because the people with the money for the CCGs and the temperaments to play them are all already playing Magic,) with either the frustration of playing a pick-up game of DotA or LoL, the havok of trying to arrange four people's schedules to meet at the same time to play your damn CCG instead of, say, playing Texas Hold 'em or Shadowrun, Any Edition, or (more likely) players just building two decks and playing both slots on their side at a time.


Now, that's already a doomed endeavor. You're attempting to dethrone Magic, which has the advantage of (a) being a generic fantasy and thus having a broader target base than cyberfantasy, and (b) predating this by twenty goddamn years. Here, take a look at The list of CCGs. That list is fucking enormous, and you know what? The only ones I've even heard of are Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon. This battlefield is littered with the corpses of the slain and fallen, callow youths who brandished their short swords and ran straight into the welcome embrace of heavy artillery. In fact, FASA tried it before. I can understand that you forgot, as that was still more half of my lifetime ago and given the cheerful clusterfuck that is Shadowrun licensing, you may not have even known about it, but still, come on! Making a CCG?

It's like trying to dethrone Warhammer 40K as a minis game - oh wait, you're trying that too. A tactical fucking minis game?! Really, guys? Really?! It's like you're following Wizards of the Coast's playbook for attempting to make their license with Lucas Licensing profitable over the Star Wars RPG.

It didn't work. The Star Wars Minis game was nothing more than a flash in the pan, even with Wizards of the Coast devoting pretty much all of their resources and effort into it and utterly ignoring the actual Saga edition of the RPG. Why? Because the market is already fucking saturated with Ultramarines and Orks and Eldar and Tau and so forth and so on. Meanwhile, this is likely to be seen for what I desperately hope it is not, but fear that it is - the blatant attempt to mini-ize the main game (as SWSE was,) in order to make the players of Shadowrun, 5th Edition need to buy Minis and Mini game maps and accessories (here's calling the Corpsec vs. Shadowrunners expansion now,) in the hopes that they'll just say "may as well" and start buying the stuff they need to complete the Minis game.

And.. A board game?! What, for when only half of your group shows up, too few to actually play Shadowrun, but everybody's in a Shadowrun frame of mind? Of all of the non-main-game products here, this is the only one I could actually see making a few bucks: board games tend to be simple, only one person needs to buy it in any given group, they don't (normally, anyway,) promise any attempt to make a sucking financial blackhole because the investment required is typically anywhere from $30-$60 upfront and then you're done, barring losing enough pieces of the set to necessitate purchasing a whole new one. The necessary investment on the publisher's side is much lower, too. Even so, though, this isn't going to be a cash cow. Again, the genre - cyberpunk-fantasy fusion - is too niche to have the appeal of the seriously moneymaking board games which get sold by the pallet in Wal-Marts and K-Marts.



Ultimately, I see the board game, CCG, and Minis game as being, at best, naively optimistic distractions from the actual Shadowrun RPG. Time, money, and talent are all going into making them when time, money and talent should be spent to make the 5th Edition product the best that I can be. Especially coming a company that has a history of its freelancers needing to take it to fucking court to get their money (indicating cashflow problems which should be making anyone and everyone involved with any of these projects nervous,) and which gave us the fucking seaside docks of Bogota, indicating a lackadaisical-to-nonexistant devotion to the editing and polishing process, something which is never going to be helped by multiplying the number of products requiring attention by four.

At worst, however, they're blatant attempts to milk the players for more money by cross-pollinating and cross-addicting them to the different products. Want to expand the Minis game money to people who like the RPG but wouldn't ordinarily consume Minis products? Make the rules for the actual game, from the ground up, assume that the player has tons and tons of Minis maps and minis to use! (I swear to Dunkelzahn, if you guys use "Squares" or "Hexes" or what-the-fuck-ever as your base unit of measurement instead of actual meters, I will be apocalyptically furious.) You know, just like the Star Wars Saga Edition RPG did in relation to Star Wars Minis, and at least they had the excuse for basing on squares that they were based off of d20, which is ultimately based off D&D as devised by E. Gary Gygax and that other bloke, which was itself based off Chainmail, which was a tabletop wargame!

(How'd that work out for them? Well, it infuriated the RPG-consuming population because WotC completely ignored them in favor of attempting to "Service the RPG obligation by producing this neat tabletop miniatures game that our lawyers say can just sneak past the Lucas Licensing contract as an RPG," resulted in them releasing only a handful of books, and ultimately failed to save their franchise.)

So, calling it now: The RPG will have a sheet/packet/whatever of rare (but not "tournament legal," as if they're ever going to host tournaments,) or unique cards for the CCG in it, thus requiring all of the twenty people in the world who absolutely have to buy every CCG product ever put out by anyone for any game line ever to buy a copy of Shadowrun, 5th Edition to catch 'em all, and/or hopefully igniting the "shut up and take my money!" CCG fever amongst Shadowrun, 5th Edition players. Meanwhile, the RPG will have rules and wording that, from the ground up, makes it sound as if you can play the game without minis and minis maps, but that you're stupid if you attempt to do so, unlike, oh, every prior edition of Shadowrun ever. It'll also poorly synergize with their "Faster, deadlier" combat, because if there's one thing that facilitates a heaping mound of dead character sheets, it's the need to collect, paint, and customize just that one right miniature to represent their character. And Damn you guys to hell if you try to do minis products the booster pack way. Because nothing says "fuck you give us more money" like telling GMs/players that they need minis for the RPG, then refusing to just come out and fucking sell them the mini(s) they need. Thanks, guys, what am I gonna do with my fifteenth Mafia Enforcer and Ancients member when my game is currently in Hong Kong and I need Triad members and Lone Star!

But of course, the potential for bullshit monetization doesn't end there! Why, just imagine it: you could cross-pollenate the Minis and CCG by packaging random minis and random cards together in the same booster boxes and charging them at only 90% of what you'd want for both of them individually! Sooner or later, the minis players will look at their stack of shoulda-ebayed-them-when-I-had-the-chance cards and decide to put together a deck and buy whatever other accessories they need. Meanwhile, the CCG and Minis game might have, in their own accessories packs, little things with rules on them that let you show up to a board game and get an inherent advantage because the text printed by CCG says you do, because nothing builds bonds of friendship like demonstrating the fact you have ten times as much disposable income as your friends and cheerfully use it to gain a gameplay advantage over them in what is notionally supposed to be a "fair" and friendly contest. And heck, why stop there? You can print little info cards containing nuggets of information for the RPG - most likely gear. possibly quick and ready stats for generic NPCs - and distribute them in the booster packs as well, hopefully getting (forcing) the players of the RPG to get in on the addiction action to actually complete their understanding of the game. (Or, more likely, just get it from the Internet.) And heck, why not go all the way and include a mini-splatbook for the RPG in the board game, or even build it into the manual therefor!


Excuse me. I'm driving myself into hyperbolic disgust here, on flimsy (read: no) evidence of cash-grabbing shenanigans on CCG's part.



The long and the short, the tl;dr version: either CCG is engaging in stupid and pointless over-reaching, attempting to launch two doomed products and one very niche product at the same time as they attempt to launch Shadowrun 5th Edition, draining time, money and talent away from the 5th Edition at the exact time when they need to devote time, money and talent to it the most, or they're gearing up for a blatant cash-grab by trying to engineer a gotta catch 'em all situation among three or four different products (depending on how and whether they can figure out a way to turn a board game into a collecting frenzy,) and then cross-pollenate them all, as if we all had infinite sums of money to throw at them. At best, this will result in those of us who only give a damn about the RPG information getting whatever information is RPG-useful from the internet, and at worse will actively make Shadowrun, 5th Edition, a much, much worse game, by writing everything assuming you consume both the Minis game (and thus have both maps and tons of minis on hand,) and the RPG. That would be like Christian Rock. They're not making Christianity any better, they're just making Rock 'n Roll worse.

CCG, please don't make Shadowrun, 5th Edition worse by trying to make me buy Sprawl Gangers and Crossfire goods.

I got the idea that they were trying to make a card game where they included all the cards in it, rather than a CCG (like Illuminati or Dominion)

At least you set your expectations low, so you likely won't be disappointed.

Don't hold back. Tell us what's really on your mind.

Well, if they do that, then that might actually work out nice and be kind of... Ethical.

How likely is that to happen? But we can hope, right?



Do you remember the Star Wars, Saga Edition? Do you remember the seaside docks of Bogota?

I didn't set my expections low, they were hammered there.




I think that's about all of it.

Not to mention, it's been done before. And it's failed before, too.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2123/sh...ading-card-game

... to quote Vaas, from Far Cry 3: "Have I ever told you the definition of insanity?" (Warning: profanity.)



Yeah - just like D&D 4th did (another reason I walked away from that edition).

I'm hoping that's not true ... but, all cards on the table, let's be honest enough to acknowledge that it's a possibility.


This. This is another reason I walked away from 4E ... despite having purchased three thousand dollars worth of D&D 3.X edition books. Not shitting anyone here: I have FOUR milk-crates full of 3E, 3.5E, and a handful of Pathfinder books. All but three or four of those D&D books are WOTC's own - so it's all directly first-party stuff. I was heavily invested in the D&D franchise, and 4E or not, if I could have guaranteed what I was getting, would have bought high-quality prepainted minis.


Contacts, Allies, special gear modifications, "discount coupons" ("20% off one Ares product during character creation!"), Edge coupons ("Refresh two Edge, once per session!"), spell formulae, programs and program options ...

Yeah. It could physically be done. And it would be every bit as dick a move as you suggest.

...

Again, I seriously hope that this is NOT the direction Catalyst wants to take Shadowrun. And it probably isn't.

But, well, "all cards on the table" and suchlike, right?

Actually, yes. Quite fondly. Had an enormous amount of fun with it.

No, a deckbuilding game. Dominion and Ascension are probably the best known examples of the genre

I don't think the new edition can be either fragging awesome or a clusterfuck. It can also obviously be kinda ok or kinda meh - just like the recent Shadowrun products.

Could you please quote the rules that say that implant control over DNI can be overridden over wireless. Or that wireless can be used to control the essential implant functions like cyberlimb movement.

+1

I'm waiting until I see more. I will, however, be very put off if SR5 assumes I buy minis to play. I hate tactical mini maps for RPGs with a passion. Not only am I not particularily good at painting minis, I'd also need to compromise a lot on my character's looks just for the sake of playing a game I don't want to play instead of the game I do want to play. It's one of my major gripes with current D&D, though admittedly not the largest one. And it makes the game sluggishly slow, because you have to keep so much more in mind and everyone considers their turn like playing chess. I'm okay with sketchy maps, but minis, no thanks. I don't even use minis in games based on a minis game, like Deathwatch.

To be fair, Deathwatch is a game about "so this turn I kill this hundred guys and leave the other hundred to my Battle Brothers. FOR THE EMPEROR, WE ARE THE ANGELS OF DEATH", not about tactical maneuvers on a battle map.

Yeah, but since most of my players have huge collections anyway we sure could use tactical maps (or just the online warhammer tt app, since we play online). Just, it takes SO MUCH TIME to set up. And even more to move. It becomes as slow as tabletop wargames, which I don't understand anyway in an age where there is Supreme Commander with it's 81*81 km land war maps.

Yeah, I called that out, too. You might have missed it in my barrage of rant.





I never even looked into 4th ed. But hopefully, White Wolf will figure out that this is part of the reason their fanbase abandoned them.





Holy shit, yeah. I hadn't even thought of that, I was just thinking "You want to know what the stats are for the Ingram Smartgun XII? Have fun buying minis and cards!"

I can't see that shit flying at any table I know of, not unless they try to push that shit for Missions, and oblige GMs to accept them and - oh. Oh my god.

*Sits down.*

If this shit comes to pass, someone at Catalyst better change their name to Wang C. Johnson. (The C stands for Cockerel.)




Eeeeyup. Shoot straight (with your player base,) conserve talent, watch your back, and never, ever, cut a deal with a financier.

Should CCG be planning to go to the Dark Side, though, I imagine many/most of us are fully prepared to, as the song says, take the money and run.




So do I, but the whole minis and mapping thing was a goddamn fucking nightmare, especially if you play over IRC or another chat client. Finding/making maps for my players was always the hardest bit, even when using OpenRPG. So by all that's fragging holy, I hope they don't try to turn Shadowrun 5th Edition into "Shadowrun: The Rules-Heavy Version of the Miniatures Game."




Fatum: I don't think the new edition can be fragging awesome.

But remember, these are the people who gave us the Seaside docks of Bogota. "Clusterfuck" is always an option with them, like failure for the Mythbusters.




There's no rules that say it can't be, either, which is why most players usually note on their character sheets that they set those settings.

SR4A p221, NETWORKING -> Devices -> Peripheral Devices; includes "cyberware" with no qualifiers or exceptions.

SR4A, p229, Cpmplex Actions -> Control Device (Command): grants full remote control of a devices functions, all of them. No exceptions or exclusions are noted. For example, a cyberhand can be made to open, close, form a fist, etc. Or you could just shut down the neural interface entirely (which is probably a good idea before trying to remote-control the implant, anyway).

SR4A, p232, Spoof Command (Spoof): the limb can be made to think that a given motor signal came from the neural interface; it will react accordingly.

...

IOW, cyberlimbs and other implants are hackable Device Nodes. And since all the "make it do what you want" actions do not exclude cyberlimbs to any degree ...

Has someone actually tried to pull off drek like that?

And you know what's worse? The absolute most horrible, nightmare-inducing part of it, for me?

...

I'll be partly to blame for that. :'(

See, months ago - on JackPoint, I think - a discussion came up for ways to enhance Missions play at conventions, somethng to do with earnign points every time you played, GMed, or otherwise just plain helped out. And for Missions, I suggested being able to use those points to buy special, small advantages for existing and/or new characters (as well as real-world coupons for items sold through BattleShop). Things exactly like the ones I mentioned in my previous post. Nothing enough to unbalance a game by itself, but with enough of them, with a broad enough range of them to choose from ... well, "Mister Suitcase" of minis/CCG purchasing fame would have a clear, strong advantage over someone who didn't have, or want to spend, that kind of cash. "Pay to win", in other words.

Hence why I leapt to the horrifying idea of those things being put into CCG and/or Minis "booster packs".

To an extent, FFG has with Warhammer 40k RPG 3rd edition. They have small print on demand packages of cards (everything in their edition runs off of cards or tokens, or other fiddly bits) that contain new spells, items, attacks, etc.

They are only found on those cards.

And don't forget, there's the Shadowrun browser game. Who's to say they won't hand out digital content as mission rewards for discounts or even only in the browser game? Maybe they will even require missions-legal convention characters to be also present as an online game character! And the same with Shadowrun Returns! Just for SR2050! Oh my!

You two are really pushing each others' paranoia. I'm about the last person to say to play ncie with CGL, but really, wait for facts beyond what is the game developing equivalent of campaign pledges until you rage. Otherwise, it looks slightly loony.


Really? I must say I'm totally unaware of this. But we don't really care much for official gear porn anyway.

Few things, here.

First: "just because you're paranoid, dosn't mean 'they' aren't out to 'get' you."

Second: I outlined an IMO worst-case scenario. And then said, it probably wouldn't come out that way. So it's not really even paranoia. More like speculating "just how bad could they conceivably screw the pooch, here?"

Third: As I said, "all cards on the table". It serves the playerbase/fanbase no better to assume rosy-happy outcomes, than it does to go into a frothing panic without proof. But IMO, it serves us all very well indeed, to be aware of both how GOOD it could be, and how BAD it could be. "Open eyes and no surprise" is how I prefer to walk into a new edition. How about you?

Yup: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_min...=2&esum=207

*Rolls eyes* Right ...


Your first post was about that. Every subsequent post became more ... agitated and irrational-sounding.


If you'd have written more reasonable things as your and ShadowDragon's conversation proceeded, I'd agree. But "And you know what's worse? The absolute most horrible, nightmare-inducing part of it, for me? I'll be partly to blame for that." doesn't sound in the least like a reasonable, measured "let's see", it sounds like you're wearing a tinfoil hat. Because really, I doubt an off the cuff conversation with you will be used as a base for pretty controversial marketing/sales move.

@Bigity: Seems it is for Warhammer Fantasy? That would explain why it totally went past me.

Well, okay, that makes things a little easier for those times when you can actually access someone else's cyberlimbs via wireless with their Signal rating.

Technically speaking, this is going to be almost all of the time.

You do not need to be within Mutual Signal Range of anything to hack it, you just need to be able to draw a line of connectivity between you and it. You can hack an RFID tag across the world if it is within MSR of another device which is in turn within MSR of another device that, ad nauseum, is within MSR of you.

Say there's an RFID tag on a package of snacks that someone has left next to his toaster in Tokyo. The RFID tag is within MSR of the toaster, which is itself within MSR of the CHN, which is within MSR of a block signal repeater, which is within MSR of another repeater which is, itself, within MSR of the neighborhood's LTG, which is within MSR of the Tokyo LTG, which is within MSR of the Japan RTG which is within MSR of a string of satellites which are within MSR of the Pacific Northwest RTG, which is within MSR of the Seattle LTG, which is within MSR of the Redmond LTG, which, since you have a high-powered Signal device in your doss, is within MSR of your doss, which is obviously within MSR of your commlink.

Bing-badda-boom, a Signal 1 device in Tokyo is a valid hack target for you, though why in god's name you're hacking the RFID tag identifying a bag of potato chips is beyond me.


Similarly, someone's cyberlimbs don't need to be within MSR of you for you to hack them, they just need to be within MSR of his commlink.

That is for Warhammer Fantasy RPG, not the Warhammer 40k RPGs.

Roll your eyes all you want, it's the truth. Being paranoid does not grant immunity to persecution, or whatever. In an identical way, being a rampant pessimist does not mean things will always turn out peachy-keen.


Hypeerbole, for the lose.

Post #2: just a "/facepalm";

Post #6: concern about whether SRR or SRO might go with an SR5 rules-set;

Post #68: pointing out that watermarked PDFs can't be resold;

Post #146: telling someone I didn't have enough information to "yell" at anyone over SR5 ... and declaring that I'd give any new edition a fair shake on it's own merits;

Post #149: responding to a remark about how much I'd claimed to spend on D&D 3.X ... disavowing any hatred of D&D4 being enjoyed by other people, while assertign that SR5 would be the same: whichever edition I played, I'd not begrudge others THEIR choice;

Post #166: speculating on a worst-case-possible scenario ... but declaring it was probably not going to turn out that way;

Post #174: answering a rules question within the current edition;

Post #176: relating how part of the prior worst-case scenario, is directly derived from a suggestion I myself made (with different intent) within the last year;

Post #179: responding to your accusation of paranoia

Post #whatever-this-one-HERE-is: see #179

...

Now I believe, Sir or Madame, that I am owed an apology from you - for the baseless and woefully inaccurate accusation you have wrongfully levelled against me. >:\


Since it seems one other company is already doing something along those very lines? My speculation was not unreasonable.


GOOD GRIEF. You know what? Stop being a fecking drama queen, and/or a troll.

I speculated, ONCE, about how something could be done about as bad as possible, and yet still maybe look like a good idea to some marketing-department bean-counter. And when that speculation garnered the response of "holy crap that WOULD be horrid", related that I'd actually suggested it, in much more limited form. How is that unreasonable?!

Or their commlink; remember, if you can get inside their PAN and stay there, that means their cyberlimbs are yours to play with.

Which is why I routinely turn off all wireless functionality for every implant any character of mine ever gets, and replace it with Skinlink. Yes, even for cybereyes.

I've even gotten datajacks that are modified for skinlink (so that my commlink can use the sim module that's also built into the jack, without having to run a wire if I don't want to).

I've seen a few discussions on other sites about getting rid of the Rogue as a class in D&D, with the idea that every character is sorta a "thief" anyway. Maybe the same idea can be applied in SR (and it sort of already is). Everyone can be involved in the hacking minigame in some way. There doesn't need to be a "dedicated class" or whatever for a hacker.


That actually sounds like a really interesting twist to give TMs. Let them be even better at the man-machine interface. Bonus abilities or lower essence cost or something when TMs use cyber. No drop in their Resonance. Maybe unable to take bio or something. Anyway, I like this idea, even if you didn't mean it this way


Fluff does kind of suggest that the wireless on cyberlimbs is only for maintenance and street docs to fix broken limbs and all that. And that most competent runners turn off wireless on their 'limbs. But this is an area that 5th could improve on for sure.

I almost suggested that yesterday, actually.

Cool. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the concept of the "hacker" going away, with the hacker's abilities being pretty much available to everybody. If you want to play a character specializing in the technological, go TM, which would be changed to incorporate some of these changes. So they're not just copy-pasted mages. Yeah, that old discussion

Personally I'd like it if the rigger archetype was sort of brought back, seems like it's missing in SR4. VCR is just a small bonus, currently. Maybe make it a branch of the TM line? Everyone can issue commands to drones and vehicles. Only TMs can truly interface with machines to jump in to them...

phlapjack77: RPGs always reward specialization, and especially so in hacking. So the hacker will always exist, especially as long as getting a good commlink is fuckballs expensive.

Also, the idea of actually reverting established setting tropes - such as unawakened, augmented humans being able to jump into drones - is ridiculous.

This is what I mean, reward the "specialization" in hacking through the TM archetype, while making general hacking something everyone can do. They're already headed that way anyway - except for the very top echelons of hacking, it's a (comparatively small) money barrier to be pretty good.

This word ridiculous, it doesn't mean what you think it means...are you telling me SR has never gotten rid of established setting tropes, like Rockers or cyberdecks or dikote? The list goes on....

Don't think of it as "reverting". Maybe VITAS mutates or something, so that no unawakened/unaugmented person can jump into drones.

Pax, Hermit, let it go please.
Plenty of us remember how much of a mess the announcement of 4th edition caused. Let's please handle ourselves with a little more decorum this time around.

I'd like that. I'd be a billionaire.

Waah im a big dick waah, broken books are awesome.

Also, Pax you do realize there's no collectable card game in the horizon or are you too busy being paranoid.

i'd be a bit more carefull Mäx, that's gonna be seen as a personal attack, as true as it might be . .

and it's a "deck building card game" whatever that may mean, where it seems some people from magic, a collectable card game as far as i know, are working on it.

Something similar to this or this

It'll be something like the new Android: Netrunner game they came out with. The announcement also stated that the board game would be Eurogame-esque, like the Lords of Waterdeep or Ravenloft games that WotC has put out (and apes from games like Formula D1 or Settlers of Catan).

I'm not going to lie, that's the part of the announcement I was actually kind of excited by. Talking to my group, they're also excited, and we hope the minis game does ok so we can get minis of their characters.

See, I like minis in the "Nice, but not 100% needed" level of, say, D&D 3.X ... you could play without 'em, but it made life sooo much easier with 'em. I mean, I have all that Reaper stuff on the way (Double Vampire, what was I thinking?!), so I'd love to put it to good use, but a game sans minis is what everyone's used to, and it can be a hard mental changeover (And expensive if you have people in the 'cardboard printouts don't count!" camp) ... maybe optional add-on rules for mini-based games as a suppliment instead of core rules? I dunno.

About half or two thirds of what you want for Shadowrun's available, mini-wise, right now, by shopping around. Guys in police armor, men and woen in business attire, all *kinds* of street punks ... not many Deckers, but a few. Drones have traditionally been a problem, but there're a few out there, now, if you know where to look.

But metahumans?

Man, ain't *nuthin'* for Metahumans.

Punk rock Ork, an Elven Decker, a Dwarven banker, a Troll *anything* ... these are the things I *need* in a batch of minis. I can scratchbuild and fake some things, but the metas are just beastly.

...which means the device's wireless functionality still has to be on. Everybody with half a brain will toggle it off, because if wireless access should ever be required it can simply be turned on again with a DNI command, just like a samurai switches his Reflexes on and off.

The whole idea of hackable cyberlimbs is the SR version of "[Random celebrity] once said [something extremely stupid]". The myth gets perpetuated because nobody wants to get facts in the way of a good anecdote.

Exactly my point. I've seen more than a few "cyberpunk" mini sets out there, which is cool, but we need elves, trolls, decent non-90s metal!!! dragons, drakes, ghouls... It would be nice to have official ones for my table.

Not that we use minis, but having something physically sitting "there" on the table would be nice.