I bought and downloaded the PDF for Run and Gun and had a couple questions if there's a DEV around.

(Yes, it's been years, but work literally drove me crazy. Long story, but if you are an old friend you have my email - ask and I'll tell you all about it.)

Problem #1: FFBA no longer stacks? Lots changed between 4th ed and 5th including mages getting tanked on essence loss from bioware for the first time (loss of 1/2 lower) but not stacking FFBA for the first time in 25 years? Not too much an issue - with the Fashion spell (once the magic book appears, for now I can convert 4A to 5) can make Second Skin as good as. It just seems... odd.

(Bigger) Problem #2: FFBA has always had three forms - Shirt, Half and Full-body. The fluff text still supports this... but there's no stat in the associated table for the shirt or half (my old preference, but since it doesn't stack...) nor is the information in the Appendix Table at the back.

OCD minds want to know. I appreciate the time in advance.

S// Kerenshara

You'll find devs on the official Catalyst forums, where nobody is allowed to criticize them. Try asking there; your post may even not be deleted, since it's just a question and no open ciriticzm.

Things must have changed a lot since I last posted... usually a question like that got an answer in a few hours during "normal" hours. I didn't expect an answer given the time until tomorrow. Back when, a couple questions like that got made into eratta or added to the FAQ. I was guessing on the former.

Do the DEVs not lurk here any more like they used to??

I'm a relative SR youngin' myself, picked up the game in late 4E, lurked here for ages before becoming an active community member, but so far as I know only a handful of the freelance writers hang out here any more, and by "hang out" I mean they sometimes show up and comment every now and again.

I occasionally hear nebulous references to some scandal or other, with CGL having a major falling out with a bunch of devs at some vague point in the past, people not being paid, bad blood, that sort of thing, but I've never actually heard anything concrete, only rumors and hearsay mentioned in passing. Lately, though, I'm beginning to wonder if some of it wasn't true - CGL has burned a lot of bridges with me as a customer in just the few years I've been playing SR, I can't imagine how many actual dedicated writers have gotten fed up with them too as business associates.

~Umi

Haha. Errata. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Yes, I know CGL released some recently. They're very much at odds with the Missions FAQ, and the supposedly cleared-with-CGL German clarifications in SR4. BReakdown of communications, like always during Hardy's tenure.


Long, long story short: Loren Coleman, one of the CGL founders, embezzled money (through cluelessness and intermingling company and private funds, or through malice, we never knew and never will know), the license holder (Topps) was pissed because it wasn't getting paid, and neither were authors, artists and printers when CGL tried to capify Topps with money.

A staff member made the issue public, Hardy fired her and anyone speaking up for her. That burned many bridges indeed, but I think it is just a symptom of a different problem. The problem being Jason M. Hardy.


Just as fishes rot from the head down, companies rise and fall with their senior management. In CGL's micro-company framework, Shadowrun's management is called Jason M. Hardy, an aspiring author and feverent Mormon (author f more than a few Mormon religious books) who was hired as the replacement of Peter "Synner" Taylor as Shadowrun developer.

Hardy was fully inexperienced in publishing, and maybe pushed into cold water (though in an interview in the run-up to SR5, he satted he massively overestimated himself). Whatever may be true here, he was not up to the job at first, and despite feeling he learned a lot on the job, he hasn't.

Like many bosses who are overwhelmed and overstrained, he is insecure. Like many insecure bosses, he decides for 'leadership management', or Putin-style administration. Hardy oppresses any criticism, and surrounded himself with authors chosen not primarily for their competence (though some are very competent) but for their willingness to suck up to him. Like many weak bosses, this bullyish behavior makes him feel in charge (and actually ensures he is in charge of his department, results and quality output be damned).

Now, surrounded by yes-men, Hardy of course gets away with any inane idea he has (and occasionally just pushes things through even the yes-men say are bad ideas, like ditching the m+n/2, m>n rule for cyber/bioware). That estranges customers, liek you have experienced. It also makes the authors as a collective shutter down from ciriticism - disregard and ignore it. This makes the audience ever more angry, the criticism ever more vitriolic, and the writers shutter down even more. It'S a vicious cycle and, by this point, it's pretty much impossible to break without getting rid of Jason Hardy and some of his yes-men for a new beginning, or the fanbase, in the hopes somewhere, a new generation of gamers will appear.

Shuttering up at the shadowrun.com forums, CGL chose the latter approach.

I posted my question on the official forums and we'll see if that's the better site or not. I just hope they're as responsive as the old 4A team was because that was really helpful to running my campaigns. I've been a loyal fan of the 6th World since 1989 and still have some of the 1st Ed books around. I love the universe and that transcends what company holds the license, the edition of the rules, the people developing it or the folks writing things. 3rd Ed really disappointed me in general and I kind of think of it the way people think about Star Trek V. Occasionally I dip in for things not covered in the later edition(s) like Man and Machine or Cannon Companion which got into the nitty-gritty in a way that appeals to me and most of the people I play with. I REALLY hope I don't have to wind up cherry picking 5 the same way. I like the setting (fluff) text very well, but I need Crunch Bits™ to run a game smoothly. 4/4A finally gave me a mechanics system (with tweaks, of course) that let me tell the story the way I want to. There's plenty to like in 5 I can steal back if I have to... I love the idea of the inherent limits (I played with ALL optional limits in place for 4A and discovered the game didn't "break" when you did and it encouraged people to make rounded characters not one-trick game-breaking characters) but I wanted them for each linked-stat (Strength affects Driving?) uniquely and it's an easy tweak. Putting back the 4A Essence calculation doesn't require anything more than changing the resulting Essence number on the character sheet.

We'll see what happens.

S// Kerenshara

My vote is hold off on 5th.

Story time.

So I'm not a long time player of SR, but I'm kind of a long time fan. Way back when the SNES was new and shiny, I fell in love with the bizarre world and adventures of Jake Armitage. At the time I was vaguely aware of the larger tabletop gaming world it was drawing inspiration from, but I never got into it or other games like D&D - just wasn't my thing back then.

Flash forward to about four years ago, when a group of friends who do play tabletop games invite me to help round out their table and are all set to try and sell me on the game, only to find that the mere mention of the name"Shadowrun" has my immediate and keen interest. Dove straight in and haven't looked back. My GM was a tabletop uber-gamer and when I made a cross country move some time later, he set me up with a bunch of his spare books (yeah, spares - like I said, tabletop uber-gamer) to take with me, which I've put to good use.

So when the marketing hype began in earnest for SR5? I was pretty damn stoked. By that point I had begun GMing my own games for a separate group of friends who like me had all previously never been into tabletop gaming. So when the new edition officially released, I naturally went and snapped up my very own copy and started poring through it. I had all these plans for converting our table and starting a fresh campaign. It was gonna be sweet.

But as I read through, as much as I liked certain changes here and there, I noticed others that bothered me a little. Then as I reread, and planned, and tested, and built some characters, I had some misgivings - but I told myself that it was just launch hiccups, that these things that seemed wrong and incomplete were surely all just editing mistakes associated with the first run of books and PDFs. I lamely compared it to when an MMO goes online, and all the servers don't work. Surely my concerns would be addressed shortly, and I should just be patient.

As time went on, I began to realize that the changes weren't coming. I began to realize the errors should never have been there in the first place. I began to feel like I'd been suckered into buying a cheaply made, rushed, incomplete product. I began to realize that the explanation for all the absurd disparities in the rules was a lack of a unified plan, a slap-dash job in which different people must have worked on different sections of the book in complete vacuums from one another, with no cross referencing and no real quality control. I began to realize I had paid good money for garbage which was only barely playable. I began to realize that even if things got fixed in later splatbooks, all that meant was that I'd be paying these people again just for the privilege of having a robustly workable game system.

In short, I felt - and still feel - like I was conned. I regret my purchase extremely.

~Umi

Umidori,

Thanks for the comment. I empathize with some of what you said, and I've already decided what parts I'm lifting to port backwards if I DO skip 5th Ed the way I did 3rd for all but the Fluff and a few Crunchy Bits™ I preferred.

Seeing as how I'm new in returning to Dumpshock after a few years AND I'm asking for replies from DEVs on rule questions, I'm no going to rant about what I DON'T like - I'm more than capable of porting things FORWARD if I can get enough comparative information to build a framework. I went so far as completing a unified system for firearms to make them make IRL sense and relate to one another better. I'm a big chunk of the way finished on a Karma-gen background-driven system for creating characters... mostly to make sure people wound up with organic characters with skills to fit their backgrounds without penalizing their "core competency" effectiveness (I like knowledge skills and "useless" skills like singing or painting which were picked up as a kid... or the skills appropriate to a "real" high school education for example). So I'm more than willing to put brain-sweat into tweaking things but I need enough complete information to make my decisions. And I really DO like most of the 5th Ed "fluff" at least as much as 4th and better than 3rd.

I'd like to see an update to the old 1st Ed NAN books but given the current release schedule, even PDF-only seems a bit optimistic of me. I wanted it for 4th Ed and I've been having to dip into the 1st Ed books and do my best to project forwards.

I'm quite proud of the Firearms conversion system (from a player's perspective, the only "change" is a different set of tables) and I'm trying to reconcile the info between 3, 4/4A and 5 to figure out how/if I can apply the same logic to the new system. The new priority system for char-gen gives me a basis to tweak my nascent Karma-gen background system and even by itself, it's a big improvement IMHO.

I'll probably keep buying the PDFs just for the fluff because I've tried to buy all the books in the past and have been picking up PDFs of the old stuff wherever I can. The universe keeps rolling, no matter who's in charge, and if I wind up waiting for 6th Edition for rules I still need to be familiar with all the fluff being tucked into the main books. I went back and filled in the blanks with the 3rd Ed stuff for that very reason despite not even using the system.

S// Kerenshara

Well, then you're in luck - a supplement dealing with the Shadows of the Sioux Nation is in the works, going by the Jackpoint login in Coyotes. For a 3rd edition updage on the 1st edition books, there's Shadows of North America.

Personally, I'll stick to the background fluff of 5th for new ideas and elementd to integrate into my own SR universe - which has alreadey deviated a bit, having no dragons civil war thanks to a campaign played and a severe dislike of the way the story was handled in published works. Mostly though, the fluff is the current team's strong side - they have some excellent fluff writers, even if they lack coordination and technical writing skills to put out rules that work. It bhighly depends on the author, though; for a look at the hit-and-miss that is current SR writing, look at Stormfront. Unfortunatly, the Shadowrun IO grew to love as a teen, with it's comprehensive, wel-enough-thought-out background, is gone, and it's Star Wars/Games Workshop style cherry-picking that's in order.

Hmm, missed that. And the Sioux Nation was the one I most wanted an update for. I'll be dropping $6 or $7 for certain.



Eew, you said the GW word. That makes me want to cry.

S// Kerenshara

The GW word is to empathize the seriousness of my disappointment in CGL. ^^

Looking very much forward to the Sioux file myself, but be warned: CGL has a Duke Nuk'em Forever policy towards product release.

I know, that's why I said I wanted to cry.



I sort of noticed that especially with the never-release of the LE Runners Black Book 2074 and Run and Gun.

S// Kerenshara

What,. they never released the follow-up RBB? I ... uhm ... okay, not to be dicking or anything, but in the same time, the people at Pegasus managed to shuffle out 2 more RBBs. Each with even more extra content. They are taking their time with the translation of Storm Front, though. But I kind of do not mind that. It's maybe best to pretend this book was never written.

I meant the second RBB was supposed to offer a LE version per my FLGS... never materialized.

As to translation... I've been out of the loop a while... are the Germans taking the lead again?

S// Kerenshara

While each person is obviously entitled to their own opinion, and I'm not excusing anything you see as 'flaws' in Shadowrun 5, I will make 2 points.

1) When you started playing Shadowrun (about the same time as me), 4th edition had already been through 4 printings with Fanpro, then a complete update with Catalyst. It had been out for 5 years. Comparing that to a first printing of a new system and calling the second incomplete is a little false.

2) I take issue with your comment that SR5 is "garbage which was only barely playable". I, and a number of other people, have found it to be eminently playable. In fact, other than the lack of content due to the large library of SR4 stuff we had compared to a single SR5 book, everyone in our group prefers it.

Not yet, though given the levels of competence displayed by the american editors, it would likely be for the better, if Pegasus would decide to shoulder that burden (which, I think, they are hesistant to).


Repurposed, chlorinated meat and soy sauce made from hair is eminently edible, yet people have a right to call it garbage food. Your quality standards and his may differ; your anecdotal experience does not give you the right to deny the validity of his.

Welcome Back Kerenshara...

I did say each opinion was valid, I specifically stated it. Remove the word garbage then, it's the 'barely playable' bit. If it was barely playable then we'd be struggling to play it. That's not anecdotal. There have been barely playable games released in the past. SR5 isn't one of them.

Since you are talking only about your specific experience, not about some sort of field research, it is anecdotal. And I playtested the system, I found it barely playable. It seems we have different ideas of 'playable'. Which is pklay, there have been people who considered Rulemaster playable.

Fair enough. Maybe I've been let down more in the past. My benchmark for a 'barely playable' system was Cyberpunk v3. (It also holds other titles: Most disappointed I've ever been being among them). We must have different definitions of playable. For me, it's down to the functionality and understanding of the core mechanics and systems (which I found fine, and indeed not all that different to SR4). Obviously it's nice to have more than that, but that's my bar for playability.

edit: Oh, and SR5 is orders of magnitude better than v3

I didn't even bother to read that shit. The junk paper, the terrifyingly bad illustrations. It seems I just have higher basic expectations than you. Fair enough, as you say.

I find SR5 clunky, unelegant, full of artefacts and mathematically not sound, with a heavy serving of wantonly introduced rules because someone wnated to correct some pet hate about SR4 (see the uselessness of knowledge skills and knowsofts, and how it's basically impossible to build a character who can speak more than one language).

Sure, SR5 is better than CPv3. It is also better than FATAL and Spawn of Fashan. But it is nowhere near what I consider a workable system, which is one that runs smoothly and facepalm-free without resorting to house rules.

I would not say it is impossible (I have a character with 2 Languages), but you sure as hell won't see any Polyglots in SR5.

Well. that's a big draw for me.

In most parts of the world, being fluent in two languages is effectively mandatory, if you do not want to live a late stone age life. You can survive as a monolingual in the West, but good luck with that in China, SE Asia, or India. Hell, it's a serious disadvantage not to know English in any EU country. This goes for SR as well - NAN are bilingual (English and whatever tribal language they're raised in), and it's damn mandatory to know Sperethiel or French in Quebec or Tir Tairngire, or Nahuatl as well as the local variation of Spanish in Aztlan. I tend to like to have my characters reflect such things. It's really taxing to build such a character in SR5 and will have a noticable effect on their survivability.

Apart from the obvious bias here ("English was good enough for Jesus ..." comes to mind, and a number of more harsh things), this flies in the face of all the super-urbanized babel that Cyberpunk is supposed to represent.

Completely agree with you on that one. I am a HUGE believer in Multilingual characters in SR. Sad that they cannot do so effectively anymore.

That has been my experience with 5th edition as well. We played it, had too many WTF moments and ended with a party wipe. I had more dead characters in the 3 months (every Sunday) we played than I had in the previous 3 years of SR4 game play. The only thing I really like is the revamped matrix rules. Simpler and faster for the most part. Matrix combat seems to be a bit of a slap fight with one side winning only when the other has a bad roll but otherwise I like it.

The rest of it though? Blah. Priority system? What a terrible throw back to the old days. In all the years I've played (since '89), never once has point allocation been the thing that made character building time consuming or difficult. Gear, gear and more gear is always the hang up. What do you need and how much of it? Most folks can thrown down the numbers for stats and skills pretty quickly but everyone lags in the gear section. Cyberware, weapons, commlinks, magic gear and all the little nitty gritty bits they need for each (smartlinks, etc). That is the biggest time hog in character creation. Been that way since day 1 and 5th edition hasn't improved it. The priority system has made it more difficult for my players to make the characters they want though. So that sucks.

Increased skill caps? Well I suppose that is nice but when you combine it with the cost in karma to get there it means you need some pretty long running games. This is especially true with the generally lower karma awards I see between the versions. Your experience may differ but for us, karma rewards were lower while things like increased skill caps increased the karma expenses. Not good.

Limits? Either totally irrelevant or a major hindrance. Case in point. We had a dwarf melee guy who wanted to use an axe. Great. Very fantasy dwarf. Fun. Too bad you can rarely hit with an axe due to its low limit. He would almost always hit this limit but his foes would usually also hit this as well, meaning he missed far more often than he hit. And what weapon would he have to switch to in order to remove this problem? The katana. So there goes his concept. Wow. Great. So every one needs to just switch to katanas cuz they are just soooooo cool. Hello 80s. Good to see you again.

Magic? Well they sort of fixed the one shot spell issues but the problem there for us was less that you could one shot folks with a spell and more that the drain was practically irrelevant. They increased the drain codes, which is fine and good but they nerfed the combat spell damage. Pick one or the other please, not both. Variable object resistance isn't much fun either. I'd rather have the player roll his spell effect and then see if he got 3 hits to beat the cameras than roll 9 dice for every camera that could be effected. Who wants to sit through that? Spirits are terrifying in the amount of damage they do and how hard their powers hit. Force x2 for elemental attack damage and force AP? Wow. And people were worried spirits were too powerful before. Add in hardened armour's auto successes for soaking (wow, more terrible 1st edition ideas? sign me up) and they are tough.

Combat revamp? Hmmm. I like the cumulative recoil and strength based recoil compensation. The rest of it? Not so much. All autofire is basically spray and pray. Not really how I see skilled shooters going at it. Short controlled bursts scattered all over to make dodging more difficult? The image doesn't really work. Single attacks? OK. Well that means fewer rolls per pass but the end result is that you just make the combat last longer. Nope. Don't need that. This especially sucks for the players since they get only a single chance each phase to attack and unless they are really good, only a single target to attack. No way to spread out the pain and even up the odds. That initiative system is just 3rd edition with some bits tacked on. More paperwork for the ref and players with advantage that ... hmmm. There isn't one.

Riggers are their own thing again. Great. If this was car wars where that meant something. As most jobs take place in corporate buildings, it is better to have the job of rigger taken on by someone else like the hacker. No need to have this as separate role. Except now it has to be because of the price tag.

Which leads to gear. What the hell? Was there a massive stock market crash and nuyen is now worthless? The cost difference between 4th and 5th edition is crazy! Sure character building increases how much cash you can start with but it isn't 3 times what 4th had, which is on average, how much stuff has increased. Why? Because someone wanted to shoehorn cyberdecks back into the game and couldn't come up with new prices on their own so had to grab them from 3rd ed? Yet not everything goes up in price. Commlinks stay the same price. For no reason at all. There is more but I'm getting into too much of a rant here.

Overall, 5th edition feels less like a new game edition and more like the creators grabbed their favorite bits from previous editions and just tagged them in however they could and then painted it over with a thin veneer of 4th edition mechanics. I don't like it and feel much as Umidori does for having purchased it.

What he said.

I guess the question is, is it better than other SRs, i.e. 1,2,3, and 4? I only really know SR 1&2 myself, and I think that, overall, the 5 ruleset is better than them, but your definition of a workable system, which I am very sympathetic to, certainly does not apply to SR5, I agree.

I mean, back in the '90s, I would have laughed at the definition - almost nothing fit it, but in the last decade or so, that's really changed, and most newer game systems or editions do not require significant house-ruling (i.e. only aesthetic/taste stuff), whereas with SR5, I find I have several pages of house rules and growing (not dense text at all, but still!). Having come from D&D 4E (most recently), which required zero pages of house rules, that's quite a system shock, for me!

Run & Gun doesn't help matters - it doesn't look or feel like the elegant, setting-blended sourcebooks of SR1/2 (and 3, which I have, but have never run), it feels like one of those terrible "netbooks" from the '90s (i.e. "the netbook of guns" or "the netbook of cyberware"), where people just compiled giant lists of fan-generated content without regard for quality or consistency or style - only with nice production values - but the text is as questionable as ever.

I'm not sure what all changed between the alpha document and the final, but I'll look into that in a minute.

#1 - FFBA no longer stacks. There's a few reasons for this. One is that it was an automatic choice before, granting you bonuses (more armor!) with no penalties whatsoever (Doesn't count as stacking!) ... it was literally something for nothing and that's a concept that SR5 has been trying to quash whenever possible. One catchphrase that sums up Shadowrun 5 is this: Everything has a price.

So, to put a price on form-fitting body armor, you had a few choices. You could make it count as stacking, invoking the bulky rules that limit armor. You could make in non-stacking. You could inflate the price through the roof and restrict it to "advanced" runners. You could leave it the same and watch every single character take it again, which would further lead to hyper-soaking trolls which are already a problem with 30+ soak dice right out of chargen.

In the end, it got broken down to see what the key was, which was that it was supposed to be armor custom-fitted to you so that it was virtually indetectable, providing protection when all else fails. Thus, it's relatively weak armor but hard to spot, giving it a role for, say, social insertion work (for conning your way into, say, a corporate resort retreat) but still having a modicum of protection. It's role as "A free armor bonus that's an auto-take" was lost. Knew it would leave some people upset, but it's one of those tradeoffs that should be made now and then.

#2 - FFBA no longer comes in different versions. That shouldn't be. There was both a "shirt" and a "full suit" option in the Alpha, but admitedly not a half-suit. The"diving suit" look, with hips, shoulders, upper-arms and upper-legs covered was a hybrid between "torso" and "Everything but the head" that was quietly removed to keep the armor scheme 'rounder' in design. A half-suit with the same armor as a shirt +1 would be possible, but would be a bit odd. Feel free to create that for your own games, however!

(I'll edit this in a bit, after I see what was published. The missing one should be insertable.)

Commlinks and every other everyday item: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...p;#entry1243638

So in effect, runners just got rich, because chargen funds are far bigger than before.

As for a general comment on SR5, it's like 4th with half the open issues fixed, but then having an equal number of screwups added (often by someone "fixing" his pet peeve by reviving the oh-so-rosy past), with the entry guarded by a cheesy 80s chargen system. Meh

PS: And why the fuck should anyone care about JH's religious views? Did he cancel the cyberware book because the runner's body is a temple?

Alright, went and had a look, and, yeah, there were some changes (probably from playtest feedback).

Until I get official word from above, I'll be vague here so those with the book can pencil this in. I'd be much obliged if you didn't convert this into a normal statline for those without the book. Picky, I know, but.

"The missing shirt had an Armor Value one less than half of the full suit, two less availability, and a cost the same as the Pioneer 60 rifle."

I'm not sure if it was dropped by accident, for a reason, or if there were changes from playtest feedback.

Thanks a bunch Wak!

It is worse than both 3rd and 4th, more someplace between 1st SR and 2nd D&D. Making it work needs rewriting entire rules blocks - Wireless Boni, I'm looking at you! - and copious house rules elsewhere. As Mantis said, the new Matrix rules are nice, but lose GOD's autokill function for suddenly, superdeckers, and introduce modules to give commlinks access to a sleaze attribute. and either drop the fucking wireless boni entirely or write your own. The official rules are nonsensical and deserving of the 10 hour double-facepalm Pickard loop.

I could manage SR4 without and SR3 nearly houserules (some things were houseruled in 3 purely for convenience, and rare bits like perception checks needed changes). I dislike some general changes SR4 brought, like making deckers anr riggers largely irrelevant, but mechanically, SR4 was solid, even with the pieces the current authors tacked on (the Way of the PDFs weren't even half bad but boy, War had some issues). With regards to War, one clarification: I play German SR4, which lacks two items and a spell from WAR, which were terribly unbalanced.


That just about nails it. Should I ever write a review, I will borrow that line, if that's okay with you.


Actually, it had only half the stacking mali, and counted as +X/+Y armour. It was good, but not as good as you make it out to be.


... because without it that is not a problem in SR5?


Inserting it shouldn't be necessary.

True, but it's still a free bonus that came with no downside.

To put it another way, if FFBA was a +2 armor for a shirt, +4 for a full suit, at the same prices, and stacked without causing stacking penalties, would you take it? Would anyone *not* take it? Those answers are "Yes" and "No" respectively, making it a non-choice. While that's good for economics (insert Yoram Bauman reference here) it's bad for game design. Anything that's an auto-include should be looked at.



Trolls were a problem during the entire design process. Some things got ironed out but a few remain. Dangit. (This one's a personal frustration.) It's bad enough that there're Trolls out there with 30+ soak dice, adding even more to that's a bad idea.

(As an aside, at one point the rule was that you could have up to 3* your Strength in armor without penalties, then as that went up, you started getting slowed down. I'm still not sure when that fell out of the core rules. It's one I miss a lot, personally. Again, not much to help with the Troll probem, but it encouraged weedy Deckers to get armored clothes and armored vests while street sams got armored jackets, giving more diversity. Only introducing an encumbered rule when armor was stacked, rather than regardless, means that weedy people can still tank.)



Agreed. It should have been there the entire time and for that I can only apologize. It was there when it was created but not there in the final product. What happened between A and B I don't know. I'll try and stick my nose in for the final pass read and corrections in the future. (Editing continues to be an issue on the Catalyst side. I can't personally do anything about that, however.)

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Obviously I can't disclose certain things, but I can detail certain philosophical issues where able. My part of this one was small, but complaints about FFBA should be laid directly on my desk. (I haven't talked about it before now as I wanted to wait until the book was actually released.) ... I know that it was in the first teaser for Run and Gun and that it caused more than a few sputterings, so I figured you should at least know *why* it was changed. I'm certain that many people won't agree with it, but for those who wanted to know why, well, look above a few posts.

Hermit, that's a wildly inaccurate statement. I don't want to dredge up old wounds for those of us who were directly involved in that mess (which I don't believe includes you). Short version--more of what you said was wrong than right.

Now, I would be interested in which parts were inaccurate, but I see that you couldn't possibly say if you want to keep your position. I do admit that my summary of the Coleman situation was probably a little too summarized.


I'll just leave this standing as it is. Sorry, but there is so much bad game design in SR5, this really was that bad? It looks like someone's hate pet being "corrected". Which is, in itself, bad game design.


Uncoupling body and encumberance would have been a good idea; it was a somewhat working solution in SR3. Limits, specifically physical and it's application, actually are worse than soak dice.


Giving armour a certain balance function against tank trolls. I could say more but you know how it is with NDA.


Yeah, I'd call that Jason Hardy syndrome. It's just like other last-minute alterations courtesy of his. Including the one change that killed SR5 for me - dropping the m-n/2, m>n rule because Hardy can't math.


Were you responsible for the weapon accessories too? If so, where has enhanced magazine capacity gone? And what the hell were the writers thinking with that passive-agressive tone?

Thank you, Wakshaani. That's exactly what I was looking for.

As to your comment about ways to Nerf the thing... *whistles through teeth* That actually gives weight to what Hermit had to say:



Hermit put it the way I think I was sort of feeling in the hind brain about the changes in 5th Ed: somebody had a bunch of pet hates they went after with hammer and tongs.

So, it was decided FFBA needed to be Nerfed... okay, and I concede that it was kind of a given but the combat system was almost built around that extra armor vis-a-vis lethality. And as I pointed out in the "official forums", if you're really worried about cheese, Second Skin layered with the Executive Suite (made "soft" with YNT Softweave so you can add chemical barrier to make it resist stains and acid rain) yields an Armor 14, almost equivalent to "Full Body Armor" and completely incognito and even if recognized considered acceptable (with the +2 Social limit mod). And it was suggested by a MOD there that you could make the FFBA "soft" and make it thermal damping 5 even if it doesn't "stack" with your "real" armor. So you de-cheesed the FFBA while leaving PPP unchanged (and I saw THAT abused like crazy) and advocate more cheese for capacity limits... I'm mentally ill but I'm not actively schizophrenic. If that level of gouda is going to be expected (along with comments about hard limits to crimp "dump stats" and force rounded characters like the GM isn't involved in the process) then we've got a problem right off and I'm as good as the next person at piling it on. It becomes a race to "who can break the system first/the most". Heck, a monkey could convert the Coatings in Attitude to just being a +1/+2/+3 bump and - because a DEV gave a definitive answer that the fashion armors were equivalent to "armor clothing" for the purposes of using the coatings - increase the above "invisible" combination to Armor 17 - almost the same as Medium Military Armor (without the little perks) and 14 of the 18 capacity if all you make it all "soft" in combination with the thermal underwear.

And if we're trying to get rid of "everybody" equipment, who wouldn't buy the Ares Alpha now? Best non-Gas Vent RC (Barre Accessories still available), best ammo cap (Raiden is BF only so that's 60% less ammo if you like two SA shots and the HVAR doesn't even count), smartlink, grenade launcher, second best ACC... but damage two points better than the entry level guns on top of all that? And it's available at Chargen with an 11F Avail code. Talk about an "everybody" item! And for a Sammy, the price markup is nothing because the Smartlink is included.

To turn around what Hermit said, it actually seems more like somebody's House Rules rather than a coherent core paradigm change. The more people discuss it and the more I go back and crosscheck things between the two books, the more I'm beginning to come to that conclusion. I had alternate gun tables to make almost all the guns attractive to somebody for some reason; I House Ruled Chargen to encourage "deeper" characters; I used all the optional dice caps to keep things within the "as conceived" limits of the game mechanics and I brought a couple pieces of SR3 gear forward for people who like it "old school" without wireless and allowed a point of ESS loss at Chargen to be exempt from the "lose a point of Magic" (still lowered the max as normal) because it was the first time you had to "buy up" the Magic stat, ever, and MOST of the old editions had mages with at least a comlink and/or cybereyes. But that doesn't begin to come close to the list of changes I'm amassing from my own reading and from people's specific anecdotal examples in this thread to use SR5. I can't tell you how much that disappoints me because it kind of starts to apply the Star Trek Movie rule from TOS. I'm starting to feel like I'm going to need to port back the things I like (Decking and Wireless Cyberdecks because the Comlink As God Device thing horqued me off and the new system for Decking seems like it might really be seamless with Meat Space combat turns) and use the fluff (which is really good) rather than bringing the "missing" elements from 4/4A (Street Magic, Unwired, Augmentation, etc.) forward. It's a shame, but I'm not sure what else to do, especially given what looks like a very long release calendar for the follow-on books. (The long release delay between Street Magic and Arsenal had more to do with the Rights changing hands than "inevitable" built-in delays.)

Are we expecting the follow on books, and roughly when? Do we know?

S// Kerenshara

P.S.: Thanks Tymeaus Jalynsfein and X-Kalibur. It's good to be back.

We never met, I think, but welcome back anyway. Sorry, where did I keep my manners ...


Actually, wireless decks were totally a thing in SR3, and the Matrix decking rules can well be used in tandem with meatspace (the decker will have twice the IP than other characters, so the Matrix still is faster, but it integrates a lot better than keeping both entirely separate). It'S not perfect but it works for me. You can even interact with drne and commlink utilities. Hell, I even built commlinks using SR3. The price was roughly twice the SR4 list price, with a lot higher lower-end prices (the SR3! Meta Link was running at close to 1500, though that by nescessity included an 'OS').


Yeah, better do that, in my totally biased opinion. did I mention they entirely axed skinlink? Like, entirely axed it, not just toned it down. Because COMBAT HACKING IS AWESOME, shoved down your throat whether you like it or not (Story time: a dev - Devon 'Neurosis' Oratz - popped up here and insulted anyone who thought combat hacking wasn't awesome as retards and other nice words - classy guy).

You sound like a [ Immature vitriol removed by moderators. -RJ ]

Wakshaani,

I appreciate your candor and your help. But if I might point out a couple inconsistencies in a couple of your arguments.

1st: a "weedy Decker" can't tank worth drek in the new combat environment just because they got another point or two of armor. Three dice still equals one hit, and that's less than an average hit.

2nd: on the topic of "averages", a Troll with a 30+ dice soak pool will be able to stage down about 10 points of damage on average. Ammunition can help alleviate that (and if they're that tough, you DO pull out that "I was saving this for an emergency" mag from your back pocket) and if you do the math, the other guy can do a 3-round aimed burst from an Ares Alpha and get the base 9 increased 2 for the burst and then keep 7 Hits staging up another 6 for a total of 18. Tack on EX rounds from that aforementioned "only use if you gotta!" magazine and you've negated a total of 3 points (a full hit) of their armor while upping the damage to 20. Even subtracting 10 from that you've still hurt him really badly. Now, if you're Kerenshara in that situation, you call the shot (and still probably max out the kept hits) for more damage. Maybe you didn't drop the troll in one shot, but they're quickly on the way to being combat ineffective from the wound penalties and another good shot will drop them. Old rule: Geek the mage first... then kill the troll. And if combat's that instantly lethal for Trolls, wouldn't it make sense to let the puny humans have whatever help they can get?

3rd: as I pointed out earlier, you've got guns everybody will take because they're SO much better than the others. The price of FFBA Full is 1,300¥... the exact same amount of difference between the AK-98 and the Ares Alpha. Since FFBA is "always" worn with other armor because it is a free stack, then why would anybody take the AK-98? It's still an "F" Avail code, and 11 is just as available as 8 unless you're using the "first time snotty nose 'runner" rules. So just on that point alone your arguments are pretty weak. If you were looking to "balance" things, you should have given the Ares Alpha a 9P code to make up for all the perks so people might take other guns for the higher damage. As it stands, there's no good reason to take any other AR at Chargen.

4th: I had NO problem with some kind of baseline limit on wearing armor because - again, using your own argument against you - it's a free benefit. If you chose to make a "weedy Decker" with no STRength or BODy, there's a consequence - a price - associated with that decision. Combined with the 1st point above there's no reason some version of that shouldn't have been included. You'd have done the Decker more help by letting him wear the FFBA as a stack. And on a related note, making bioware BODy increases force resizing of armor... a Suprathyroid gland doesn't change your size one iota; again a blanket rule to "balance" where a detailed sidebar would have been much better.

5th: the new (higher) damage codes make combat heinously more deadly for "one shot kills". Three-round aimed burst at a human in decent gear with a called shot is D E A D - dead. Nice if you're the runner shooting rent-a-cops but not so cool when the aforementioned "rent-a-cop" actually had a military background and knows how to USE the gun they're pointing at you. Up-scaling the skill levels only made for bigger dice pools and more hits; the old optional rule capping kept hits at 2x Skill worked perfectly to emphasize skill over talent (attributes) while keeping the dice pools manageable and making "elite" skill levels achievable (using the fluff descriptions of the skill tiers). Trust me - playing with all the caps in (20 dice max so no auto-7 on average, max bonus dice = [Skill+ATT], max kept hits = [Skill/2]Rounded Up) fixed 99% of problems at my/our tables. (I convinced all my GMs to use it and they agreed it un-broke the game for the most part.) So I guess the point here is that more dice = more Hits even with the weapon ACC limits, and combined with higher starting damage codes one-shot kills of PCs can be a bit too common if you've actually written a background more than a paragraph long. Another reason not to worry about FFBA because the PCs will have it and the NPCs won't which gives them that little extra edge... +3 Armor is +1 Hit to stage down. Another old rule (not specific to Shadowrun): don't kill the PCs unless they're being stupid.

Please note: I'm not attacking you in any way; I'm trying to engage in a dialog since you're obviously intelligent, are being helpful, and aren't talking down to me like I'm a 1st-time tabletop player trying to run with the Starter Kit in my lap. I just want to make sure a) we understand your core logic and b) you actually have checked your assumptions mathematically. The example of the Troll in #2 is the kind of "real math" which some people don't do - they get to one piece and freak without following all the way through to the end.

S// Kerenshara

Null sweat, chummer. Pleasure to meet you.

S// Kerenshara

Feel free to PM me examples or start another thread on the issue of bad design (Seriously, I'm always willing to hear feedback), but I'd rather keep this one focused just on this whenever possible. However, I can go ahead and state that "Something for nothing" as a design element is dead as far as I can see for SR5. Any type of must-have Thing from the past will get looked over. When we get to cyberstuff, spells, and so on, expect a similar treatment. (See also: Stick-n-Shock getting the nerfbat.)


Limits are for another thread, as noted. I do regret that the Strength-to-Armor rule wasn't kept in the final pass, however. Part of the rebalancing work was to try and make "dumpstats" more important, and linking armor to Strength, which is your "carry around heavy stuff, like armor plating" stat, rather than your Body, IE "The stat that keeps me alive" , worked out on several levels. I might start a discussion on this at some stage and get more feedback from everyone.



That's a bit of character assassination on someone who isn't going to come over here to defend himself. I understanding venting, but if it could be a little less personal, I'd appreciate it. Just a request for decorum there.

The alteration itself wasn't last minute. IIRC, it was in place even before we were hammering away at alpha rules for cyberware. I couldn't tell you what all went into that call, but it wasn't due to math difficulties. I want to say that it was to keep the stressing of essence rules constant. It doesn't really make sense for, say, a cybernetic arm to dock you for an entire point of essence normally but only half an essence if you have a nervous system that's already jacked up by biomodifications. Trying to keep things simple and logical was part of the cleanup. Again, I know some people won't agree with it (and LOTS of people have grumbled over not being able to get quite as powerful), but it does line up well.



I wasn't, no. Some of what I initially put in was mutated from the initial design by quite a bit as the book got further along, more rules came in (different authors go at different speeds, with some missing deadlines and others getting work in early. Adjustments get made to align rulesets.) ... I'll note that I'm also the one who put the initial military grade stuff together, but the final result is quite different than what I had. (Gained more functions, were majorly reduced in price, off the top of my head.)

For passive-aggressive tone, I don't know. I know that there's always some in-joke work that goes on, and it's sometime between writers. In another book I had Plan 9 drop "sheeple" into a line, then a line got added making fun of that, which cracked me up because, yeah, it was a weak line and I should have stepped up a bit more there. I had a line in for one of the commlink-equipped guns that mentioned tacnets and brought up them being overly-complex, over-priced, and rarely working as advertised, which was a bit of snark at past iterations, but that was pulled out later. (Sadly, I also lost a neat bit about Renraku selling certain software to make the guns work better. Wordcount is a harsh, harsh mistress.)

I'll talk about military armor later as I know it's caused some high blood pressure.






My pleasure. If we manage to get a FAQ together, I'll do what I can to get it in there as well.



Not my work there, so I couldn't tell you the thought process, sorry. I can say that the combat system was *not* built around it. FFBA wasn't in the mix for the SR5 core book playtesting, nor was it on anyone's mind that I know of while things were being made. Lethality being increased was intentional. We wanted combats to be scary again and while armor went up, firepower went up a tad more for compensation. Quite frankly, most Shadowrunners should be afraid of getting shot. Oh, I don't mean sniffling and whimpering and what not, but "Joe's been hit!" should be a surefire note that he's wounded and you should avoid those situations when you can.

Shadowrunners who walk down hallways with impunity, blasting everybody they see like they were Terminators, not so much. (And, yes, I'm fully aware that this will come back in the discussion about milspec armor later. We'll cross that in a while.)



I'd have designed it somewhat differently personally, but, not my work there. IMHO, it's too good for what you get, but most of the playtesting I was involved in didn't see them get much use. Most people stuck to pistols, which are easy to hide. Those who wanted big firepower took sniper rifles. I'm still grumbly about those things. The baseline Acc is too high, again IMHO, and some sort of "aiming" mechanic that would have slowly increased it would have been better. As it stands, they hipfire better than pistols or shotguns. I'd personally do more work there than I would on assault rifles, but, that discussion's long finished.

The Alpha's a fantastic gun when you want to go in heavy, however. No doubt about that.



I think it's safe to assume that some kind of magic book will exist in the future and some kind of cybernetic/bioware book as well. What the format would be and the dates for those, I couldn't tell you due to an NDA until they were officially announced. Your basic "Splatbooks" always sell well as there's always a demand for them. People love having more Stuff, you know? I still wish we'd have done Rigger 6 as the first book, just because A) it's not fair that they're always last in the cycle and B) would be fun to challenge that Rigger Curse, but, I'm just a typewriter for hire; those kinds of choices are way above my pay grade.

Alright, let's see what's been posted since I started typing.

OK, let me clarify something I said: when I mentioned being factored into the lethality, I was talking older editions. Once FFBA became a fixture, playing without it made things harder hitting than possibly intended, though that's subjective as drek, since the DEVs knew it was going to be used. And it was still encumbering... it was just 1/2 value as opposed to full. So it's not a "free" anything if you're Body 3 - it limits what you can wear over it.

Does that make sense?

And I also abhor 'runners playing Terminator (I like that analogy and I'll likely steal it). That said, I'll repeat my statement from earlier about disliking Pink games. I had my share of Pink in the early 90's when I had a Troll Sammy whose initiative was 18+5d6 (exploiting a single line rule about mixing Initiative enhancements) and who carried the de rigeur assault cannon while wearing FFBA under a Herritage kilt combined with his Titanium bone lacing and Orthoskin 3. He bounced Light Pistol ammo as a matter of course and even shrugged off anything but FA assault rifles. There's a reason I switched sides because that turned out to be boring. Accidentally killing a guy by staging up from a 15M Stun punch to "Overkill" with a good roll kind of drove that home. 4th Ed made it harder (read: nigh impossible) to pull stunts like that and the various caps I keep mentioning made it even harder. Was it theoretically possible to build a troll physad who had 30 boxes of damage and able to roll 25+ dice to soak? Yes. Was it possible at Chargen or even a moderately long campaign? Nope. Frankly, I need to go back to SR5 and find out where your "30+ die soak" is coming from... or you could just tell me your math.

In the games we played, nobody was even wearing as much as Security Armor, and even the Sammy routinely wound up in the body and fender shop for repairs. Combat was pretty deadly and the rules for firing on passengers in a vehicle combined with a HMG on FA essentially managed to shred our whole team such that Edge was burned (we wound up writing a House Rule to cover that as a result). I haven't seen Terminator style play at my table in years... not since 3rd Ed I think. I didn't really think it was possible any more short of going Pink Gouda with the GM's collusion. I'll grant the PCs weren't usually afraid of being one-shotted (short of sniper rifles) but they also weren't cavalier about getting shot. I just lack the experiential frame of reference to discuss that.

And my personalized charts for firearms addressed the over-lethality of sniper rifles by bringing them into the fold while buffing normal rifles part way to meet them. Turned out to be seamless in SR4/4A. Redoing it for SR5 looks to be a copperplated PITA since the numbers seem almost arbitrary. If YOU are interested, I'm happy to give you the shorthand of what I did. Just 'cause you helped write the rules doesn't mean you can't house rule things at home.

S// Kerenshara

Ah, the poor man's Move by Wire.

Indeed, which cropped up somewhat regularly in my experience.

I built one character with it once - a character specifically designed to be a cheesy pink mohawk type. escaped corp experiment living in rat's nest, bbqing all kinds of animals and the occasional guy who ticked him off. I usually squicked people out much more than my "wait what, 5 Initiantive Dice?" did.

I always like when Mechanics take a back seat to the Concept. My Spider changeling had many of the same characteristics as you describe. He REALLY squicked players (let alone their characters) out. Sadly, I never get to play him enough - and he is completely unplayable (unbuildable) in SR5 (at least for the moment).

You have some good points.
I agree with most of what was done in 5th and understand why they did it but....

In a lot of places it was too much of a good thing.
Magic and wireless bonuses are two places that come to mind.

I do like how limits help prevent Pornomancer and provide some thing that better equipment can provide besides extra dice.
Shadowrun really needed some way other than extra skill dice to show the grade of gear and limits seem to do the job.

Doubling the max skill rating to 12 might not come in to play that much for the players unless they are in a long running game, but they sure help the GM and make a legendary runner well LEGENDARY.

Still there is enough 4th edition material for a GM to work around this until the other 5th edition books come out.

Certainly I could see several modifications to the axe to give it a better accuracy (personalized grip, improved parts, custom balancing, and the like).
As a GM, I'm all for players that are trying to create unique PCs. I would have offered the character the opportunity to purchase a custom Positive Attribute to help his concept out. Maybe some thing like Old Standby: +1 Accuracy with Favorite Weapon for 5 karma.

I liked Run and Gun.
It was a little leaner than 4th but that is to be expected especially when you realize all the drones and vehicles material will be in the Rigger book.
I thought the Martial Arts system had some possibilities and the new called shots and combat actions added a lot to the game.
The combat tactics and combat maneuvers also looked interesting but seemed simple enough to work in game play.
I will freely admit that being a serious martial artist in Shadowrun is Karma intensive.
I agree that Karma rewards might need to be more generous.

I really do understand it's a lot more complicated then I'm going to make it sound, on top of the fact that you ultimately have little say-so in how things are done, so let me apologize in advance.

But you know what hermit was saying about house rules going in and "correcting" personal beefs with the system? Yeah, that comment on Trolls is it. That's a type of change that "seems" okay, but falls apart under the weight of unintended consequences.

Because really, having to take out milspec weapons, just to put a dent in an optimized soak monster does present problems with that level of force being pushed against the other players, and if the GM goes light as to not turn the other PCs into a red smear, it's kinda hard to physically challenge that troll. So cutting back on a troll's survivability to make them more equal with the rest of the PCs makes a lot of sense on first blush.

But Trolls, per RAW, really only have two things going for them currently: unarmed melee and soak pools. You take away the Troll's ability to shrug off attacks that would kill others and their priority has to come down massively. Sure, one can choose to play an unoptimized choice for roleplaying reasons, but that player shouldn't be punished mechanically for making a roleplaying decision. Trolls would be categorically weaker than any other choice because the player is plopping a priority of B or A (if they want any sort of Edge) and you are massively underestimating the effect that has on the rest of the character. Have you tried to make a troll under SR5 who wasn't mainly focused on exploiting their high strength and body? As it is, they usually end up two or three dice behind overall, but have a decent survivability advantage over other options. Nerf trolls anymore, and there will be very little mechanical advantage to playing them in any role, which is mind-boggling due to their placement on the priority chart. Go look at the argument debate between Cain and Jaid one thread over in the Troll Combat Monster thread.

Again, I didn't mean to call you out specifically, and I apologize again because you really do seem like you are intelligent, reasonable, and passionate about Shadowrun, and share your thoughts (when you can) with the rest of us. I really do appreciate what you do, and I am thankful for your contributions.

No worries and I don't take things here personally. I just haven't ha dthe free time I need to really get in here and chat more often. (The runup to Xmas and the unwinding after ate up a lot of my personal time. Getting my head back into game mode now and getting back in with writing projects.)

Getting ready for work now (My day job, mind you, which is a night job for today and tomorrow. Long story.) ... When I'm back tomorrow, however, I'll go into some Troll talk. You've already found one of the design issues, but here's one to think about:

Do you want to encourage Trolls to have a high strength and body, reflecting their racial strengths, or do you want Trolls to use those as "dump stats" and focus on assorted mental boosts? How do you encourage play towards the direction you pick, and what do you do to allow for the non-standard design to still have viability? Do you want to change traditional stat bonuses and, if so, do you change any other race (such as Orks) to make room for the new Troll mods?

(When I'm back, I may well open a thread and get everyone chewing on some Troll design lab work, see what Dumpshock comes up with in terms of theory on the issue. It's interesting stuff, especially when you get a couple of math-heads in the mix.)

Or you could simply ask the player of the Troll soak monster to stop playing like a douche. No, really.

Now, I might be in the minority here, but most players I have run into are more than willing to cut things back a bit if you explain that you simply don't want to deal with their ridiculousness in whatever manner they are taking the system and breaking it over their knee. Yes, let them be tough as hell, great at what they do, etc...but also explain that you don't want to have to whip out the mil-spec slaughterhouse weapons for one player in the group and toss your whole campaign into a death spiral. You will very likely get a thoughtful "Ok" from them.

As for the FFBA stacking issue, I have never actually run into it. I had a character that wore a full suit of FFBA (plus some of the plating options) as his only armor, but having someone stacking it with Heavy Security Armor or some such to BOHICA the armor rules apparently just didn't interest anyone in my groups.