After a few years hiatus running OSR D&D Retroclones, I'm gearing up to start a new Shadowrun campaign. My home game players really love the setting and wanted to get back to it (even though I'm still having a lot of fun with old school D&D stuff, gotta give the people what they want!).

I begun flipping through the 20th Edition 4th Core Rulebook, for the umpteenth time and it hit me; It's truly a badly disorganized mess of a rule book!

It's amazing how much bloat and misplacement of rules is evident in the book when the core mechanics of Shadowrun 4th are so elegantly simple.

I wish they had made it clear that the basis of the whole game is a Skill + Attribute +/- possible modifiers against a Threshold or against a NPC's Skill + Attribute +/- possible modifiers. I also wish the writers remembered this and ensured every thing you did in the game simply called back to this simple base.

There is truly a lot of scope for dynamic, exciting gameplay in 4th edition that gets terribly lost and bogged down in poorly presented and over wrought explanations of rules.

The worst offender is without a doubt the Matrix rules. The introduction of new stats for commlinks and programs is byzantine and confusing. Not to mention the weird way the rule books over explains every single thing you could ever do with a comm-link, which seems to serve no purpose other than to baffle the hell out of a new player.

I'm vowing in this campaign to unleash the full potential of the wireless matrix. I want hackers to feel like an exciting addition to a group of runners, doing their wireless thing in a concurrent and exciting way in a ruleset that reflects everything else going on in the game.

As such, I think I need to re-do the Matrix rules and I was wanting some thoughts on how to do it.

Here's what I was thinking; All Matrix skills are based on Skill + Attribute dice pools (No device stats, no programs). NPC devices have a simple "Device Rating" which derives their Dice Pools for opposing matrix checks. Runner commlink "Device Ratings" form the basis of the PC defending dice pool that NPC hackers are up against. How does this sound? Any ideas?

My main concern would be working out how to balance out the game economy now that Hacker characters get a free pass on a lot of NuYen now they don't need to buy programs and pimp their comm-links, any ideas?

I'm doing something similar, but am utilizing device ratings and programs. I'm just replacing attribute for device rating and skill for program rating.

Here's what I've come up with:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15S097ue...dit?usp=sharing

It's a simplified wireless rulebook for my players.

My changes to the rules are as follows;

Basically everything is done as Skill + Logic dicepool. No more worrying about which programs you have running, and how they affect what your trying to do. Wanna hack something? Do a Hacking + Logic dice pool roll.

The skill component of the dice pool is limited by the "System" program you must purchase for your commlink. You require a "System" program for each Skill, ie a Hacking System Program, a Computer System Program, a Electronic Warefare System Program etc. This means you still need to spend NuYen on programs to be a good hacker and represents an investment by the hacker to differentiate himself from the normal dumbie matrix user.

The logic component of the dice pool is limited by your commlink's Response + Signal divided by 2 (rounded down). You gotta spend the NuYen to have the best gear.

With the elimination of having to worry about the piddly " Common Use' programs, now hackers can focus on buying the "Hackers Programs" which are the Weapons, armour and equipment of the virtual world.