Fifth Edition added Mentor Spirit bonuses for Adepts.
In all other aspects it is the same deal as in fourth,
If I am not greatly mistaken at least.

See, I think this is personal experience, though, because I cannot remember an Awakened Character WITHOUT a Mentor Spirit in SR4A (I am sure we probably had one or two over the years, but I do know that all of my characters took them). Most of them were for Shamanic Characters and Adepts (Yes, even the Adepts took Mentor Spirits, even though they really did not gain benefits from them, and received actual penalties). So, from my perspective, One of the biggest parts of being a Shaman was still there and was heavily emphasized - not ignored as it seems to be at your table. So I would have to chalk that up as personal experience differences, not a push to eradicate the differences between styles.

Personal experience is personal experience. However, the point is that because totems/mentor spirits were optional for shamans (and, in fact, cost them BP and gave them a disadvantage), not everyone took them. You could easily have a shaman without one, and might even have an advantage or two for doing so. This was a huge loss, it'd be akin to having a D&D cleric without a deity. There was nothing to encourage that sort of roleplay.

I guess it would seem alien to someone deeply immerged in SR to play a shaman without a totem.

Does the players your refering too come from 2nd/3rd ed or did they start with no prior knowledge of SR?

It makes a lot of difference IMO

Based on reading the fourth edition rulebook I had no idea how important a Totem is to a Shaman.

My point is that the flavor that you guys say can be preserved in the unified magic system,
is not present in the fluff of the book in the first place, or at least they do not put emphasis on it.

I always found the difference between the traditions,
as they it was described in the book, to be extremely vague.

You do know that a DnD Cleric can worship a Philosophy and not a Deity, right? Right there in one of the books.

Which is one of the reasons all my Shaman (and my Adepts as well) have a totem. Hell, even my Hermetics tend to acquire a Mentor (many are good for representing hermetic Philosophies, in my opinion - My Last Hermetic Character (Black Magic Tradition) was mentored by Adversary, for example - Makes for a very Different style of Hermetic than one Mentored by Seductress, even if they are both from the same Tradition).

I believe they have played all Editions, from 1st. I also believe it was a mechanics decision, not an immersion one. Does happen from time to time.

It does indeed...

They tend to be vague for a reason, in my opinion, because not everyone sees a Tradition in the same way. Those differences often cause a lot of discussion. Even if they are codified. In other words, the vagueness is a Feature, not a Bug.

Voodoun, for example, was sorely lacking in a good substance in 3rd Edition, even if it was codified (and even 4th really went to some odd places with it). It had a lot to do with the many varied forms/sects of voodoo out there, to be sure, and it seemed sort of hodge podge to me in a lot of ways, pulling bits and pieces from different sects. In 4th, you are free to design several versions/variations on classical voudon if you choose to do so (Using what is provided as a starting point for your research, and likely scrapping the fusion that is presented). And, at least for me, it eliminates some of the confusion of the perceived Fusion of the Tradition from 3rd.

It is strictly a preference thing, I think. Either you like that kind of fiddling around with the Game World, or you don't. Many people, in my experience, don't. I love that sort of stuff. Makes me research a bit and actually learn about what I am writing/designing about. Even if, ultimately, it is for my own enjoyment.

In 3.x, yes, although worshiping a philosophy also requires you to codify the behavior requirements with the DM beforehand. Not true in 1e or 2e, you needed an actual deity. By no coincidence, old players also complained that 3.x removed roleplay requirements. 4e didn't really require it either, and look at the complaints there! 5e reinstated it, and it's doing just fine.


Actually, as i recall, Voudoun had a lot more writeup space in 3e. Somewhere, there was a huge in-character article, written by a Houngan, on what Voudoun was like for her. Magic In the Shadows had pages and pages of rules variations and descriptions for Voudoun, so it was very different mechanically and narratively. Street Magic had half a page, plus the writeup on Possession. That's it.

I seem to remember that writeup on voudoun being even earlier, in Awakenings for 2e.

Completely different experiences. But yes, you did need to codify your philosophy... see a pattern here?
The shift to DnD 3.x was actually a boon (as was the shift to UMT, as far as I am concerned).
You will never find me in the group of "Old Players" complaining that 3.5 was a step back. While 1st and 2nd Editions were fun to play, they pale in comparison to 3.5, in my opinion.
4E really sucked, and 5E is passable, though not in my Top 10 game list.



It did have more space, to be sure, but it felt very cobbled together, blending too many of the various POV's into what tried to be a cohesive whole. Tried to do Way Too Much in my opinion, and would have been better reflected in separate write-ups for the various sects/cultures where you find it... Mind, I cannot go back and review the data, since my books were stolen and I have never actually replaced them. Going on memory here.

4th was still messed up, but gave a good starting point for further research without trying to mesh a lot of disparate stuff together. Still needed to be broken up a bit. I'm a geek is all, so there is that. Whether it is a plus or a minus depends upon circumstance.

You might be right. But anyway, the fact is that 2e and 3e both had detailed writeeups on Voudoun, as well as going into good detail on shamanism and hermeticism. 4e did not.



4e D&D aside, you recognize that your relationship with your deity (or philosophy) in D&D2e was core to playing a cleric, and it backed that up with mechanical differences. This is similar to shamans in SR3. 3.5 reduced that difference, and both D&D and Shadowrun 4 effectively removed it.


Taking a quick peek at Street Magic, Voudoun got about half a page of flavor description. That's really sad for a major tradition-- Voudoun was third in importance in 2e-3e, and definitely came right after shamanism and hermeticism in PC popularity. In the 4.5 core book, shamanism and hermericism also each got shafted in terms of fluff; they spent too long describing the unified system, and not enough time detailing the traditions and what they meant. Removing the mechanical differences only exacerbated this, it made it seem like roleplay was an afterthought.

And it's not like you couldn't create a tradition in 3e, or even 2e for that matter. I had a set of house rules that detailed how to build a tradition on 3e. It was pretty easy, actually: you chose the spirit types you could summon, what accouterments you needed, that sort of thing. In 2e, I actually build a Jedi tradition using similar guidelines. I don't remember all the details, but I remember that they were exclusively physmages (although rather it was because they only appealed or recruited them, or if only physmages could join, was a mystery), they needed Star Wars memorabilia to learn new spells and such (which, coincidentally, cost the same as Hermetic libraries), and they could summon a variation on ancestor spirits, that for some reason always appeared in the form of ancient Jedi masters. As you can see, the tradition isn't overpowered or unbalanced in the slightest, and it works as well as any UMT tradition-- maybe a bit better, since it's harder to break.

As far as spellcasters are concerned, I have to agree with TJ here: Everybody picks up a mentor, because there are enough for every concept.

I hardly saw any. Not because there wasn't a lot of them, but because a lot of players didn't think it was worthwhile, spending BP to get a disadvantage.

To a degree, this was true of 3e and earlier as well, players picked Totems based on rather or not they could live with the disadvantage, or took Coyote. But because it was basically mandatory, they all took a totem, and defined their character based on that. Quite often, that decision would be based on roleplay, and not mechanics-- for example, I never understood why Bear was portrayed as a gentle healer, and yet went berserk if he got a paper cut. Mechanically, it might be balanced; but because I could never resolve that roleplay conflict, I never took Bear, and neither did many others I saw.

However, in 4.5, you had to pay for that disadvantage. On top of that, because of the way 4.5 handled edges and flaws, magicians were already reduced in the number of edges they could take-- being magical counted against the number of edges you can have. And, I never saw a character who wasn't strapped for BP as is, so this just made the opportunity cost steeper. Players rapidly realized that, under most circumstances, Mentor Spirits weren't worth it.

Did you read the paragraph above the disadvantages?

If you want (I somehow can't see 4th Ed as a past form ) a concept, there is an option with the right flair. If you want an optimized character, there is an option with -1 in some area you won't use and +2 in something useful. If you want both, there is an option with a good bonus and a disadvantage which fits the char's personality.

Yeah, which was another reason to not take a mentor spirit. The advantages weren't always worth it.

Look, shamen were defined by their connection with their totem. That was how they related to magic. This is not unlike playing a cleric in D&D. However, if you made it so wizards could cast cleric spells, wear cleric armor and use cleric weapons, and buy the other cleric abilities... who'd play a cleric anymore?

That just invites min/maxing.

In SR3 and earlier, if you wanted a shaman's advantages, you had to take a totem. Even if it didn't provide any advantages or disadvantages, you still had to define how you worked with your totem. While the GM could build or adapt a totem to suit you, the player ability to cherry pick bonuses was largely nonexistent. 4e allowed a ton of min/maxing, by allowing people to select their bonuses, and stack them to high heavens. Adding more would just make the problems in 4.5 worse.

This whole choice thing defines why we have just picked up 3rd edition and bought some replacement books for the fall-apart old copies.

If you want ..... choice.

Choose SR3...

none of my table feel the need to migrate to 4, 4.5, 5 ...

even though I have all the material and did enjoy a brief stint playing SR4A online (here, as it happens)..

we just keep going back to 3rd ...

at the end of the day it's up to the players to decide what tradition (fluff) they want, if any ...
and up to the GM to manage the min/max

it's old and mature enough that the likelihood of beginners picking it up is slim so you get the die-hards like us that explain in no uncertain terms how munchkiny they are or are not!

That's why SR3

SR3 may have let you powergame, but it was discouraged by having baseline options that were functional and not gimped, and by having other cool stuff to tempt you. You could throw down a hideous amount of dice, by, say, being a shamanic sorcerer with the Fenrir totem, combined with Priority: A resources to get two force: 6 manabolt foci. But a normal, hermetic sorcerer with no bound foci could function - so it was tempting to branch out more. I seemed to play a lot of sorcerers who were low resource skill monkeys in SR3, something I shied away from in SR4/5.

SR5 tries to "balance" things in the worst way. First, by making options more expensive, and secondly, by giving everything drawbacks. The first results in more hyperspecialized characters (rather than a face/something else, you play a face, because anything you spend on other stuff takes away from your face ability), while the second encourages min-maxing to compensate for the penalties.

I do have to agree that I saw more hybrid characters under 2e-3e than 4.0-onwards.

The big problem was the skill splits. In 3e, anybody could become a decent decker by picking up the Computer skill at 6, plus a decent deck and a few programs. And in theory, breaking up the Computer skill wasn't a bad idea. However, 4.0 also added the skill caps, so most of your skills were capped at 4. When you also add the other skills and areas that were required to function in 4e, it took a huge investment to become a good decker, so much that it was very hard to branch out and do other things.

Admittedly, faces had a different problem. Because there were so may ways to inflate the opposition social pools, faces needed to inflate right back to keep up. That led to an uncontrollable arms race, as people fought for the biggest dice pools, just so they had a chance. Combat characters had a similar problem, although it wasn't quite as bad.

funny. skills for deckers were expensive in SR4 perhaps (compared to SR3 and earlier), but attribute and resource requirements were so low that i actually saw a fair number of deckers with secondary skill sets (or characters with decking as a secondary skill set) in SR4.

Honestly, I've seen very few deckers, period, since the end of 3e. Part of that's the Pizza Problem; while it existed in 3e and before, 4e actually made it worse. Part of that was because the matrix rules were complicated and silly. And part of that was the rise of technomancers. They were one trick ponies, always have been, and they didn't usually start as capable as an equivalent decker. However, sprites more than made up the difference. Sprites could eat equivalent agents for breakfast, and they had powers and abilities their summoners could never get.

In 5e, I've yet to see either. I personally can't make heads or tails out of the Matrix rules, so I don't know if it's a rules issue or a practical one.

Fourth Edition Matrix Rules tried to make the Matrix more realistic in relation to the modern day internet.
While that is an admirable goal, it made the rules almost incomprehensible for non-programmers.
A friend of mine worked in IT, and he understood the terms fine,
he is not a roleplayer though

I managed one Hybrid-Hacker in fourth, with one of my players, though it was hours of work.
He turned out as a stealthy infiltrator with a bow, and a cyber-arm with blade and shock-hand.
Worked pretty well, because he could almost dump strength and let the strength part be done by his arm.

Fifth Edition rules are an interesting system for one, with the slapping on of MARKs
Decks work similar to third edition decks, with variable, swappabe values,
and the Overwatch score too is lifted from third.
I do not like the MARKs though. They make conflicts overly complicated.
At least they finally clarified grids again,
something they never did in fourth, and those too, work a lot like third editions grids,
except for grid-hopping, which again is overly complicated.

I remember being on a convention in Germany, where there was a workshop on matrix rules,
because no-one understood how they worked.

Well I don't think that we could qualify the 3rd ed Matrix rules as good ones.

And I really tried to use them, but they're far too long, ruly and not roleplay at all.

Yes, the rules are bad because there actually rules for anything and everything, very detailed difficulty levels and accordingly TNs as well . .
Much less GM mother may i and application of real world skills which make the matrix much more like social combat by trying to convince the GM that you should be able to do x . .

I keep by my point that technically the SR3 Ruleset is still the best there has ever been, it's just that it was made for people who can do integral maths in their heads without using fingers <.<

It's for exactly this reason that i am still convinced that whoever does a shadowrun computer game should just do a 1:1 port of the SR3 rules, because then you have a computer do the heavy lifting of the crunchy bits, much like you have in MegaMek for ClassicBattleTech the Board Game . .
And then you can still try to change stuff around later on when you find problems with it, to make it more accessible . .

I actually tried that, to make a program (under Visual Basic) that would take away the crunch from my shoulders. But in practice, the security tally design, doesn't quite fit for me. When you read SR novels, you have some spaces that are Black ICE protected. Technically speaking, the SR3 model pushes decker to make multiple quick and short intrusions which has this consequence:

> If you investigate the system for some time, then search the data your looking for, you can be in a huge trouble and face nasty ICE.
> If you make very short and quick intusions, you might reach those with close to no opposition.


That's why I will probably rewrite them.

Yeah, that's not a difference to how the fluff works either, so i don't really get what your problem is there O.o

When you read most novels, the hottest data is associated to the hottest ICE, which is IMO the best way to make a hack dramatic.

Now some hot ICE because you made your 5th "Analyse Sub-system" check seems, maybe more adapted realistic-wise, but so uncool storywise.

Like:
Option A:
PC: I enter the system from the corp (rolls)
GM: Ok you enter the sculpted system which (describes the area).
PC: Is there any other linked host (rolls)
GM: Nope
PC: What's the Access Sub-rating (rolls)
GM: you fail
PC: I retry
GM: 9. And a white ICE attacks you
(fight)
PC: And Control, Index, Files, Slave (rolls, rolls, rolls and fails, re-rolls, rolls)
GM: well 9, 9, a grey ICE attcks you, 10, 9.
PC: woah! ok. And Security? (rolls)
GM: Orange-6
PC: Ok, what the secret agenda for project X (rolls)
GM: A nasty black ICE attcks now! mwahaha

versus option B
PC: I enter the system from the corp (rolls)
GM: Ok you enter the sculpted system which (describes the area).
PC: Ok, what the secret agenda for project X (rolls)
GM: you've got it, hopefully no dangerous white ICE is on your track when logging off.
PC: That was intense!


Those are possible exemples from SR 3. While maybe consistent in the idea, it's awfully boring...

I stand by the thought that the 3e Matrix rules were good, but the rules writing was horrible, and the layout was bad. 4/4.5 had bad rules, but great rules writing, which made them seem better than they really were. IMO, that's the biggest strength of 4.x, the writing was fantastic. 5e's rules are incomprehensible, the writing is so-so (admittedly, some of that is the editing), and the layout is as bad as SR2.

There are some areas, such as using Edge, or how regeneration works, that are actually clearer in SR5. It's like they actually listened to the controversies and complaints, looked at the SR4 rules, then set out to clarify the ambiguous areas. If the whole book was like that, it would be a great book.

Unfortunately, other areas seem to be copy/paste jobs from SR4 that have important parts missing, or clash with new rules in another section. Skill and Attribute boosts, for example. Attributes have an augmented maximum, but it is an area of the rules that is easy to miss. Skills no longer have an augmented maximum. If you have a skill of 7, you can get improved ability: 4 for it, then get a reflex recorder on top of that. On the other hand, it is unclear whether adept improved ability can improve a skill over 12, since nowhere does it say that improved ability can go over that limit, only that it can improve the skill to 1.5 rounded up.


SR3 had less outright bad rules - it had too many subsets of rules, though. Often for very peripheral things that should have had much simpler resolution systems.

For the most part, 5e suffers from really bad editing. I'm not fond of the writing, but that's a different opinion, and it's nothing that a good editor couldn't have fixed.

The biggest problem is a lack of organization. The writers clearly didn't have a good idea of what each other was doing-- why should they, that's the editor's job. And the layout is piss-poor, and they included way too many subsystems that simply don't belong. (Did they really need Alchemy and Enchanting in the core book?) The art is really pretty, but otherwise, the look and feel of the book is pretty bad. And there's still the proofreading problem to deal with-- I haven't checked recently to see if my proofing credits are caught up because I don't really care, but it's sickening that we proofed so many books, and all of our corrections were missed.

Honestly, you didn't -need- all those rules for SR3's Matrix anyway. Run the Matrix straight out of the rulebook, and it's not bad. The biggest help to running SR2/3 is the simplest thing I ever picked up, from Blackjack back in the day. Target numbers are for drama. Use and abuse situation modifiers, but keep the action going and never ever let your players get bogged down on mutinae.

True dat!

I have to say though, I had a clearer grasp on the matrix rules after I checked back on the rules in second edition. Those are explained way better than third edition matrix rules, but they are extremely similar.
The basic rules from the rulebook are pretty neat in 3rd and 2nd in my opinion.
They are a fast-paced miniature dungeon-crawl basically.
I have not yet checked the rules from the matrix book though.

It is going to be a nightmare to code them into the fifth edition setting though, with wireless and all.
Making up a matrix environment for every random passerby's com-link the PCs decide to hack into was always the most tedious of tasks in the wireless editions.

They are not.

The 2nd ed dungeon crawl is basically simulated by a full host in SR3. When in SR 3, you see linked host structures, they would be like SR2 mega dungeon with different themes.


And to me, a rule that you very vaguely follow is a sign of a weak rule.

It would be like saying: "What, 3rd ed rigger rules are fantastic! I just make a skill roll, and the rest is up to imagination!"

I think I'm with sk8bcn. That approach reminds me a bit too much of fudging GMs who adjust NPC stats or dice rolls on the fly to make fights more "dramatic".

SR4/5 is even worse than SR3 to me. You only have the vestiges of the old Tron/Gibsonian dungeon-crawl matrix, but decking is still an overly complicated subset of the rules, rather than a simple skill test with modifiers. Hacking something should be about as complicated as taking out your toolkit and bypassing a MagLock. If you're going to have GITS-style hacking, make it simpler, and make it something everyone can use. Decks (while they did fit SR3) were a bad mistake to bring back - deckers should not have to be their own special "class", and decks make them far too gear-dependent (considering how much the average run pays, and how much decks cost, it is no wonder that the SR5 fluff talks about deckers taking bullets so their deck doesn't get hit).

So I read the first 7 pages then jumped to the end on page 26. So sorry if I missed a few things in between. Over all what I'm hearing is that everyone has a preference but almost everyone agrees that 2nd Ed and parts of 3rd Ed are the best.

I have to admit that I haven't played since 1998 (wow that seems like a life time ago!). Back then it was 2nd Ed and we all loved the system over all. Yes our characters where powerful, especially after running them for over a year every week for 8 to 10 hours. But each character was unique in their skills and our GM was probably the best GM I've ever had.

I know companies want to keep things fresh and they want to try and fix the rules where they are broken, but I don't understand why they need to change the flavour so much. It really sounds like 5th Ed is almost nothing like what I remember Shadowrun being. I would like to get back in to the game, but I'm not sure which edition I should try. That and availability of source material might also be a problem.

SR3 was the best and making up systems on the fly, though. All you needed to do was assign a color rating and the system values, and the rest was easy.

For example, let's say a decker is doing some legwork, and sees that one person had some strange financial transactions in his past, and decides to investigate further. I hadn't prepared for this, I might have thought the info was enough, but I can run with it easily. All banks would be Red systems, so now I know the threshold for any tests. The AFICS numbers could be a flat value, say 10's across the board; but I decide that a bank would have more protections on reading and changing accounts, so I bump the Access and File ratings to a 12. I might reduce the Slave by some, too. These TN's might sound high, but since programs reduce the TN, they're not that bad. I'll still need to add Ice, but that takes eyeballing anyway, and is a fine judgement call in every event.

So, when someone pops a sudden hacking run on me, I can generate the entire outline in about fifteen seconds. That's much better than any other edition.

Exactly. Flexibility is an asset, not a liability. SR3 is excellent in that it has an excellent overarching resolution mechanic, a way to lay out target numbers logically, and the rest can be handled by the GM.

Hey, who said the system couldn't have any good points, but overall, I still don't like it.

And by the way, that resolution isn't truly straight by the book.

You should have connected first to the RTG before searching the LTG, then try to break in then hope it's not a multiple host environment (like with a guarding host and a data host one step further), maybe fight a few ICEs and all would be so roll roll roll.

And if you have multiple pass initiative, you'd even had to split the dice poll. If you wait till next pass?

Heck, you even have a Null Operation roll to do.


By RAW, they were not good.

Yeah, but the 4.5 matrix had problems, too.

Seriously, 3e ran a lot faster and smoother, for all its warts. And it was much easier to create as needed, you didn't need hours to prepare. 2e's Matrix dungeon did take a lot of prep time, and 4.5 had similar issues. Also, everything in 4.5 was an opposed roll, so you ended up doing a lot more rolls in that version.

No version of the Matrix is perfect, and every system has its share of issues. 3e was the best by far, though, simply because it was the easiest to handle.

Well I can't comment on 4th or 5th. I've bought nigh every 3rd ed book, over half 4ed ed + core 5th and I have intention to buy everything.

But as I play following the timeline and since I'm into 2nd/3ed timeline, I haven't read 4th at all.

Do any of you know of a hacking system that goes a little more into the style of GitS?
A rule-system I mean.

I may house-rule my 2070+ campaign to that style.

While it may still not be the definite Shadowrun style, it makes a lot more sense within the context of the Wireless Matrix as it is presented in the fluff.

Most of what you wrote was true. However, until CGL learns what an editor is(or actual use the ones that are there), no the writing quality is NOT better.

SR5 tries to, but the implementation of both bricking (rendering a matrix-connected device unusable) and wireless "bonuses" (more accurately, penalties for not leaving yourself vulnerable to hacking attacks) is done very poorly. Unfortunately, they also bring back decks and keep deckers as a dedicated "class", rather than making hacking simpler and more ubiquitous. Plus, the people who think the cyber-hacking in GITS is so cool forget that, even in the first story, these super-hacker elite special forces, with an AI taking the brunt of the hacking risks for them, still go into "autistic mode" (turning wireless off) at the first sign of an enemy hacker.

4e was written under Fanpro, before CGL got a hold of it. I don't remember who the line developer was for 4.5 was, but I suspect it was Peter Taylor aka Synner. Synner and I never did see eye to eye on many things, but his dedication and passion for Shadowrun was very evident, and he did a good job keeping up the quality. Although the quality problems really started under Jason Hardy, I don't think they're all his fault. I believe the issues go all the way up the chain.

As I recall, the quality problems started after the Great Freelancer Exodus, after Randall Bills spent the Shadowrun budget remodeling his house, and the freelancers went for a year or so without being paid. Now, it's the proofreaders who are just being caught up. I don't care, I do it for fun and not payment, but it's still unprofessional. Anyway, after that scandal, a lot of great writers left Shadowrun, and the ones that they brought in were mostly Battletech writers who knew very little about the setting, or new writers who weren't used to professional standards.

I know I'm going to piss some of the freelancers off by saying this, but-- the proofreader's job is to be a last check for errors. As a writer, I would never turn in anything that I hadn't proofread a few dozen times myself. It's my job to make my work as clean as possible, and the proofreaders are a final set of eyes. However, when I've proofed stuff for Shadowrun, often it looks like I'm reading a rough draft. There's just that many errors, typos, grammar issues, and spelling mistakes. The fact that the unproofed copies made it to print will show you what I mean.

Still, that's not entirely the fault of the writers. A good editor, who receives something with that many errors, should send it back, along with a few stern notes. An editor can bring out the best in a writer, and help them out. Rather they have bad editors, or good editors who aren't allowed to do their work, I can't tell. I suspect that they're not allowed to do their job, but I can't be sure.

Adam Jury also left about the same time as Peter Taylor, and while he was responsible primarily for layout, he seems to me to have also been at least partially in with the editing team (which would make sense - i can think of plenty of reasons you'd want the person doing layout to talk to the person doing editing if they're not the same). He once gave me a proofreading credit for posting a *ton* of proofreading corrections (including one instance of an entire paragraph duplicated in the middle of another paragraph) for an SR4 book.

Yeah, Adam left for similar reasons, and he did a lot more than just layout. He was also responsible for building the pdfs, and gave me personal help with the early ones. He's another person who I don't always agree with, but I still think is very cool, and losing him was a blow to the entire Shadowrun line. He's been part of Shadowrun since nearly the beginning, and he was here on Dumpshock before it was Dumpshock. There's maybe two or three of us left who remember the Deep Resonance days.

Of the others I know that left around that time: Michelle Lyons was also a long-time fan, and I respect her work. Ancient History was the walking encyclopedia of Shadowrun. I don't remember when Jay Levine left, but his writing is absolutely amazing. A lot of really good writers who were also knowledgeable fans left after the scandal, and the line hasn't been the same since.

I second that objection. I started in fourth edition, and now that I am reading third edition material, I have to say that it is superior in fluff, as well as in the basic crunch, in most aspects.

I say that that is personal preference, though. I found SR4 to be faster than Previous editions, both in design and play. After all, in SR4A, it really boils down to Device Rating. Choose that and you are done. You can get more detailed if you want, but for something Off-the-cuff, all you needed was DR. Very Similar to your breakdown of the SR3 Off-the-cuff example you provided, but with less moving parts. SR4 seems like it has more rolls (and it may) but previous editions were notorious for solo Hacking Runs (taking hours) where no one else was involved, and SR4 changed that (90% of our Hacking was simultaneous with Other Character game play, and the remaining was resolved in less than 5 minutes worth of exposition and dice rolling), and for the better.

You know, I had a bigger issue with the Pizza problem in 4e/4.5 than I ever had in 3e,

Part of that was because offline storage was removed. Because everything was wireless, you could theoretically hack anything from anywhere. And don't give me guff about wifi inhibiting paint or similar junk, if you can access it from anywhere, you can daisy-chain an access path to it. All you had to do was find a transmitter within range, and turn it on. The only way to make this work was to handwave in offline storage.

But the bigger problem was the Data Search skill. It basically dominated legwork, and put everything onto the decker. When I ran Missions, standard procedure was to come up with a huge long list of questions, hand them to the decker, and then leave to get food-- very literally a Pizza Problem, although technically it was a Chinese take-out issue. Right on the heels of that was what would happen if the decker needed to quickly hack a system to get more information. In real time, that took quite a while; in game time, it could take hours. In both cases, the other players could easily be bored.

I'm well aware of the history, I also own every SR book there is at the moment. 4.5 in my opinion is lumped into the 4e era as it was pretty much relative sameness. I'm not assigning blame to one particular editor or person, but to an in general era. I dont think 4e at all was an improvement as what comes before, especially fluff wise. It bothers me that battletech products come out so much better and read better then shadowrun products.....from the same company.

Quality is in the eye of the beholder- depending what your looking at and for. 4e(and 5th by extension) the quality is fluff and writing is not improved from what I see. Prices have gone up, but quality of what comes out has not.