Open image dir: http://www.shadowruntabletop.com/wp-conten...untabletop/img/
Choice pieces: storm-front-cover.jpg, hopefully the final release will have some image filters applied. And the corp directory, which yields nothing new, just the logos of the current Big 10

Which means all of the gear splat books are now obsolete......

There are multiple storylines too. I've opened the first two pages of Eye of the Hurricane (at least 8 pages are on the site password protected), and the first page of both Sleeping with the Enemy (at least 5 pages are password protected) and Fractures(oddly there doesn't seem to be a page 2, but there is a password protected page 3).

I don't mind if books become obsolete over time. At least this looks like it isn't a complete top-to-bottom revamp, like some other games I know. *cough, cough, D&D 4E / Next*.

What are you basing that on? I ask because I'm stuck at work and unable to get into any Catalyst websites at the moment.

Right, but I fear this is a D&D 3.5 - 4.0 conversion.

And the part about obsolete splatbooks really irks me. We didn't even have that much for 4th Ed and now we're resetting it all again.

The Big Question is - when does the 5th Ed Corebook arrive?

With some luck, they just finetune the 4E rules, and it's moderately downward compatible, as 3 was.

Main difference, screwing up D&D means you get guys following you and shouting 'magic missile!'
Screw up SR and you got a full on Mirror shades wetwork on your neck.

Not excited about 5th edition especially since i just bought my back up copy of 20thA - I should mention that with every evolution SR seems to be getting better

I'm Looking forward to the Video game especially since it is turn based and not real time or first person shooter

I will not play the mini's table top game but i will buy into them...I get tired of running my SR game using DND Minis...I'd like to use more realistic Minis to the character types my players are playing

I am hoping it will be a bit like Prince of the City was for Vampire the Requiem. Very fun game indeed.

They are powerful at the Matrix, and nothing else. It takes a crazy investment of chargen resources to get them where you need them so that they can be awesome. Yes, they can be über at the Matrix. I should know -- I'm playing a TM in a campaign right now.

I also know that being a technomancer requires the most dice-rolling of any character type in the entire game, between the regular Matrix mechanics and having to compile sprites and constantly resisting Fading. The amount of dice-rolling a TM must do is absolutely absurd.

I would like to make a TM that has more reasonable and balanced attributes in chargen, so that I'm not having to feel guilty about dumping Strength or Agility down to 1 so that I can put those points towards other things.

I would even be willing to see TMs toned down slightly on the Matrix side if they could be a little more diverse on the real world side.

Some of the above could be achieved with some simple Skill or Skill Group fixes.

Decompiling sucks, so I never take it. If that were fixed, maybe I'd have more of a use for it? Same for Banishing.

(And damn it, if you put a skill in the core book, WRITE SOME RULES FOR IT. Putting Diving, Parachuting, and some other skills in the book and then putting ZERO rules support for them, that is just inexcusable.)

Damn after years of SR3 I had finally decided to buy SR4! Bad timing I guess...

The TM's I play are pretty competent outside of the Matrix and in it. Of course, none of them have a Resonance above a 4. *shrug*
They do roll a lot, though I have never really seen it as being any more than some other character types in practice.

I use both Decompiling and Banishing. Guess it is just playstyles.

There are rules for Diving and Parachuting, just not in the MAIN book. These rules are in Arsenal. *shrug*

Honestly, I'll be giving all of these a try. 5th edtion needs to bring back alot of the previous edition flavor to get me back, as well as crunch. I do not like the nWoD system. A floating TN isn't reqired, but I want seperatation between riggers and deckers, mages and shamans (etc), elementals and spirits.

I would also prefer a return to an earlier point in the timeline, or a timeline neutral kind of deal (like the latest version of Legend of the 5 rings).

At the very least, much of SR4A needs clarification, tightening up, and above all, consistent and timely errata.

If you could play 2050 SR out-of-the-box, that'd go a long ways towards convincing me to pony up for 5e.

(That won't happen, but it'd be a big plus if it did.)

I would love if TMs went in the direction of that recent thread, more resonance affecting real world electronics, more submerging to become one with the machine spirit and enabling cool stuff like Biowires, heck even magnetism is up for the grabs.

.... sell a Watermarked PDF? Nope. Not happening.

Hell no. Play a 40K techpriest if you feel the need for that.

Why not? As it is they're more cybermancers then technomancers, heck I bet the only reason they're not called that is because it's someone elses IP.
Or are you of the belief that TMs should be retconned out of existence?

I am, but I don't get a vote in that sort of thing....

The cat is out of the bag anyways
Better to keep em and make them more rounded out, imo.

Quite honestly? Yes. The concept messes too much with a basic premise of the world: Technology does not mix with Magic. It irked me with Otaku, but was reined in with BRainscan and Psychotrope. I can live with biocomputers as Biochips/Mona Lisa Overdrive imagine them, but magical computer magicans who are better than you with computers because magic is magic ... not so much. On a side note, the idea that adept magic can boost computer skills in VR needs to be dropped entirely. I'd also drop it with AR for balancing reasons.

Barring a retconning out of the gameworld (which will not happen because it'll ruffle too many feathers), I'd at least like to see them reined in and not making hackers entirely unviable as characters for mroe than one-shot beginning level games. You could throw in Daimons (Otaku had those - ally sprites, basically - and I see no reason why mancers should not have them too), but barring that, the TM mechanics need a thorough reworking with more limits and a power glass ceiling, offset maybe by lower Karma cost. Same with adepts. Something like "threading may not exceed 1,5* Resonance", and reworking echos to be less overpowered. And please, a swing back to making them a mundane phenomenon.

SR4 was supposed to put hackers back into the spotlight, but mancers ensured hackers remained essentially unviable except for short duration games where their early glass ceiling didn't matter.

Personally Im quite fond of the concept. But I see it more as they're basically fuelled by technology so advanced it's considered magic. Going along those lines, having their source be very mundane (AI programmed nanovirae or something? I'm not one for technobabble) But having the effects appear magical, is totally fine in my book.

You seem to be getting your way with the Infected already...

We just need the fluff that brings them into line with the technomages from Babylon 5. They could do crashy shit, but it was all simple tech stuff and slight of hand. "It's not an illusion, it's a hologram."

But their rules need some tweaking too, to separate them as separately viable from riggers/hackers.

They were hackers. With holoprojectors. Technom,ancers talk to machine spirits and worship the Omnissah. That's two different things.


Easy. No jumping into a vehicle without a VCR, or an appropriately costly echo.

I like the concept of Technomancers, but they had an unfortunate introduction (Included in the basic rules and an archetype before being introduced into the world, the Emergence delays making it so that they were a mysterious thing ... when they'd been played by gamers for months as just a Thing, you know?)

Bit of a stumble out of the gate that they never quite recovered from.

The rules, meanwhile, are tricky. Do you want them to be Techno-Mages, weaving electrons like mana and producing cool effects, or should they be deckers without decks, bound by the same laws as anyone else, but able to make icons dance with their thoughts instead of their fingers?

And what role do Deckers have when Technomancers are around?

I'm not sure how much of it was chewed before the introduction, but decking, as a whole, has been a problem since day 1 of Shadowrun, despite being so vital to the setting. The 4th ed move to wireless, sticking the decker in with the group instead of sittng back at a hotel, sipping from a cola can while the rest were taking fire... very nice change. Team integration and more fun for the group is key.

IMHO, the decker's role isn't far removed from the Rogue in D&D ... get doors open, open locks to get at valuables (data!), and to handle situations from a different angle than stabbing them (Street Sammies) or reducing them to ash (Magicians)... In short, Deckers solve problems by thinking. 'Tis a vital thing.

Believing that you're communing with the machine spirit (that for all we know might just be some sort of matrix sentience) and gaining powers from it. Doesn't mean it actually works that way. Afterall people thought thunder was angry gods before we knew what caused it. People seek to explain what they do not understand, and all of the sudden having access to innate technology wired to respond to bioelectrical signals... Believing in a machine spirit isn't a far stretch.

Sorry but that is it. I am not buying the core rule books all over again. Not happing, especially after such a short burst from the two 4th ed.

This 'burst' was longer than SR2 or SR3

Doesn't matter. They have milked it too often for my money- literally.

I wouldn't consider 4 editions moving into a 5th in 24 years that excessive.
Want milking? Look at TCGs

Will I get it? I'm 99.9% sure. But I am a little concerned about what the changes are. It may be like the rules edition change from 1st to 2nd, so close you didn't need to upgrade the books. If so, I'd convert quickly. If not I may hold off for a while.

I see where you come from, but the thing is that 40K machine spirits are literally ghosts in the machine, a mystical thing. I do not thing this meshes well with Shadowrun's central paradigm that technology and magic are opposite poles.


With some luck, the new rules will be downwards compatible enough you won't have to, like with SR2 and SR3. Other than that, I can understand where you come from, especially with the "errata'd" new edition of the core books and SR4A having been released only a few years ago. And cheated people, because they were actually un-errata'd, because Jason Hardy just hates errata that much.

That would be an interesting opposed duality...
Magic got Adepts and Magi
Technology got Sammies and ...TMs?
Hm, no that doesn't really work... TMs can't just stick more tech in themselves to improve.

Eight years is a short burst? That's just about a record for a Shadowrun edition. But it's your call.

He's generally able to defend himself, but I'm jumping in anyway because this is an untruth, in my opinion. And a personal attack, in my opinion. You're better than this kinda thing, Hermit.

And again, the "cry for errata" reminds me heavily of the MMO players who power-level their characters in the game to maximum level within a week of launch and then whine about there not being much already in place for maximum level characters.

Whatever it is that keeps him from posting them, at its best, it's negligence, IMO. Just as the tons of typos and other failures that don't look good for an editor in chief.
Your unofficial errata are a case in point.

Count me in (for the limited edition of the core rulebook at least).

After a fashion. It's kind of by default; I'm the only writer who expressed an interest. I've been talked down from some of what I want to do, though.


For the record, my unofficial errata for Running Wild are from a book that predates Jason's tenure as line developer. Why they haven't been signed off on to make them official ... well, I have some suspicions on the matter, but beyond that I'm not at liberty to say. The errors, however, occurred long before Jason was in the developer position.

What. For one, it's not pining for a patch that powers up the player but that makes the game run smoothly. You just seem oblivious as to what Errata in RPGs generally are meant to do.


Well, I know he was sitting on errata that were formulated for years ... and then didn't release them with a new print run of the books. Also, before Hardy's tenure, some Errata were released. After his stepping up, nothing happened. This looks pretty bad to me. But yeah, maybe he did not de-errata the books deliberately. But it remains at least negligence and a bad way to treat the fan base Shadowrun depends on to sell stuff.

No. No open beta. Not ever again. I'm watching that trainwreck with Next over on the WotC forums.

Never let the fans tell you what they want in a game. Well, not like THAT, anyway.

And the errors keep cropping up. And the errata keep being suppressed. And the table of contents remain unclickable in pdfs. So yeah, I'll stay with my opinion that these are failures that should be handled by a competent editor. Because that's part of the job description.

What have the old, more detailed tables of content done to whoever lays out the files, anyway?

People still uses those? I stopped going there after they removed the interesting sub-forums and swept the 3.5 forums under the rug. Like we would just forget it existed...

Also open betas are great when the developers know what's worth listening to.

You miss the point, the "cry for errata" does sound suspiciously like whining.

Patrick... unfortunately jmhardy's actions have done nothing whatsoever to disprove this notion only encourage it. Actions do speak louder than words. Look at all the books WITH FINISHED ERRATA which don't have it up and available on the website. How many books got reprinted without the errata included. You can't argue with those facts. Statements of fact are not personal attacks, divining the man's motives for it is a matter of opinion because as best I can recall he's never gone on the record for the decision why.

My own take is he was handed a bad hand with the financial issues... and a decision was made to focus on creating new product and selling it. Maintenance of old product is a cost center to a game company while new stuff brings money into the coffers. The problem is that occassional and good errata comes down to a basic issue of quality control.

Also you ignore that he IS the line developer. He IS a public figure. He has done little to nothing to put forth his own views in the public forum. Synner at least made regular attempts to reach out to the community and communicate with them in an interactive manner on these forums and others. While you as a freelancer may have regular interactions with him... the rest of the community at large does not. If that's your bar for a 'personal attack' then you have it set WAY too low.



All4Big you have no idea what you're talking about here. Then again you always keep yelling about ignoring the rules anyhow because characters should be handled with kid gloves. And it's not fun to have to play by rules. So what do you care if rules are maintained and amended. You're just out to play calvinball anyhow.

And what you do here sounds suspiciously like trolling. What makes and doesn't make a big deal is not for you to decide anyway.

Besides, maintaining rules understandable, with as little contradiction as possible, is just product maintainance. Pushing product out and not giving a danmn if it actually works is ... bad economics in the medium to long run.