QUOTE (Fatum @ Dec 26 2012, 10:51 AM)

"Disregard the opinions of the core fanbase and cater to the people who're happier playing MMOs to get a massive failure like D&D4E was, yaaaay!"
Despite the poo-poo'ing of the older, established fanbase, 4e did quite well for itself. It also achieved all of its design goals: it streamlined the system for both players and GMs, it brought in new fans to the hobby (always a good thing), it made non-magical characters fun to play, it made all three tiers of play experience fun and easy to do...the real flaw was that they spent so much time on the combat system that they kind of dropped the ball on the stuff outside of combat. Which was fine if you were capable of hacking in new stuff, but very clearly annoyed some people. And Essentials was a dud, but oh well.
Your quote above? I could remove "people happier playing MMOs..." and replace it with a general "video games" and throw it back in time to any other edition change-over and have it resemble
exactly what the established playerbase was saying at the time. In other words? Your shit isn't new. Get used to change.
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While I agree that some mechanics (like vehicle rules in general, for example; not just the catastrophic Chase subsystem) can use a lot of work, Shadowrun has always been about going into at least some detail. Simplification is good until it's turning the game into a roll-to-win.
Which is not what I'm suggesting in the least. I'm suggesting streamlining and simplifying the very many rolls that can happen in this game for no good reason.
Here's some links to Shadowrun hacks the Story Games crowd have come up with Shadowrun. While I'm not suggesting that we go as full blown as these, it's a good way for the two of us to get on the same page regarding simplification and ease-of-use, yeah?
Shadowhack (requires Mouseguard)
Shadowhack (.pdf link)
World of Shadows (requires Dungeon World / World of Dungeons)
Or, go read
Dungeon World, which is my current new favorite game, and makes me excited to run D&D again for the first time in ages.
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That's in the introductory chapter of the core book?
My problem being that it's buried in with other junk that makes it's message unclear. It also doesn't explain the game's purpose - its "focus" - which needs to be right there, clear as day. The game needs to talk about it's themes, what it sets out to do, what it expects from both players and GMs. The message isn't clear in the tiny blurb they give it in SR4a.
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Do you think that different firearms should have the same range penalties?
Yes. Short / Medium / Long / Extreme, with an escalating penalty. For an example, look at the new FFG Star Wars book, for their concept of "rings".
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Or that the darkness and smoke should affect thermal and low-light in exactly the same way?
Who cares? It's a flat -2 to penalty that you can negate if you're wearing the right equipment.
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Where do you see the room for simplification without oversimplification?
Here's the problem: gamer's seem to equate "simplification" with "dumbing down". And gamers fear "dumbing down", because to some degree it makes it a little less arcane and a little bit easier for other folks to join their inner circle.
All I'm suggesting here - and it follows through with what I'm about to say about gear and cyber - is that this game and its' books focus way too much on little niggly stuff like, "here's a bunch of equipment / cyber / qualities
that can get me one more +1!!!!" and uses up way too much bookspace for it. Seriously. It also does it for rules; I mean, the book goes into all sorts of could-have-would-have situations, where all you need to say is, "if it's a penalty, give it a flat -2 penalty to the roll or the pool." Or, "have the player roll a Dex check" instead of big titles and subdivisions that state "HERE'S ALL THE RULES!!!". It's not worth a damn, and it eats word count. It's porn. It's there to make a gamer feel like they're smart because they have ALL THE +1S!!!! Get rid of it. Simplify, simplify.
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Nope. Just nope. Gear should differ in significant ways, and if you're going to have 10 different heavy pistols they should differ in more than just the default upgrades that you can get separately later on anyway, yes. However, having bunches of different cool gear is a large part of the game's allure, and frankly, the willingness of the humankind to spend dozens of hours just to see a single stat number increase has been demonstrated by Blizzard more than once.
Again: all I'm suggesting is that you can cut a huge chunk of the equipment chapter - which is huge, and unwieldy - starting with, "light pistol - 4P. Heavy pistol - 5P /-1 AP. Automatic - 6P /-2, SA / BF". And not lose much! Hell, then it leaves open the door to put in the customizing rules from Arsenal, which is a net gain, right? Right?
(I would also like to point out the irony of you poo-poo'ing Blizzard above, and then using them here to support your need for gear porn. Just sayin'...)
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Why not, exactly? You're exchanging money and essence for attribute and skill bonuses. What is wrong about it? Especially minding that there are all kinds of ware that do much more than just grant you a bonus to this or that?
What's wrong with it is that there's too much space given to Yet Another +1 and not enough to the weird and useful cyber and bio. You can just genericize the +1 cyber, stick them at the beginning of their section, and then leave room for other stuff.
My basic point stands - condense the +1s and the gear, and use that room for something else. Something that can improve the game for everyone involved, not just the guy who likes to sit on Chummer for hours making characters. I'm not a fan of system mastery, and loathe Monte Cook for really introducing it into the mainstream. If we took the attention away from getting one small niggling bonus to your character sheet to the stuff that's actually interesting - where did they get that gear? That cyber? Why are they running? Why do they have the skills that they have? What's their goals? What do they want? What kind of runs is this guy going to go on? Where did he meet his team? Does he like his team? - this game would be a lot more fun to play and talk about.
All we get now is, "is this build okay? Where are my screw-ups? LOOK AT THIS MONSTER BUILD I'VE MADE!!!" and that's
boring.
(Your mileage - and Sixth World - may vary.
And that's okay.)