I find it funny that W:TF was so ill-received.
I liked the new fluff a lot to be honest,
though I am not a player of the original.
They changed the setting enough to be a different one.

In Vampire it still felt like the same setting,
but it was suddenly missing stuff.

I have never heard anyone complain about Mage, funny enough.
On that I have no idea what the reason is to be hones.

What happened to Vampire is a little like what happened to Shadowrun I think.

Maybe they should have added wireless bonuses

So butt-flavor - Wireless bonus: residual chilli.

That's the thing. W:TA was a very polarizing setting. You either loved it, or hated it... and the people who loved it didn't take kindly to it being changed drastically, for the most part. When you're playing a game that is essentially about a dying breed of furry ecoterrorist superheroes fighting the good fight, you tend not to get as excited when the new version paints you as the outnumbered bad guys who are objectively in the wrong and monsterous abominations unto Nature as far as the setting goes.

I wouldn't necessarily agree to the Werewolves in W:TF being bad guys.
Some Werewolves in the past were, and the Werewolves of the present are kind of burdened with a job that sucks a lot (spirit police),
but they are not really bad objectively.
Spirits are the bad guys, as they are in the new Changeling. That one was not that ill-received though as far as I could see.

The Emo is out of this world here though, which is something that is a common theme in the nWoD (Something: The Emo).
W:TF though is not the worst contender in that respect, not by a long shot. I mean have you SEEN Promethean?

Like that game about combat walkers larger than tanks that became about piloting woodcutting exo-skeletons....

They aren't necessarily bad guys by their own viewpoint, but by the perspective of literally everything else in the setting? Yeah, they are. The spirits hate them. The humans hate them. They hate themselves. Hell, even the other werewolves (the Pure) hate them -and- outnumber them. But even worse, the narrative of the game presents that view as objectively correct, and the Forsaken as abominations.

Methinks thou art reading a different game than I am.
However, maybe we should get back to the issues at hand on Shadowrun?

Stop sucking and you won't get belittled!!!!


I'm kidding. Even if you stop sucking you'll still get belittled.

I feel the love. It's like sharp stilletto piercing gently between my 3rd and 4th vertebrae. Ahhh...

I can tell you what my reason is: The new Mage is such a shit biscuit that I keep forgetting that it exists until someone reminds me.

For those of you who didn't really play the original or understand what the attraction was, here's a quick breakdown:

Original Mage: the Ascension was wrapped around the idea of the validity of postmodernist philosophy, around an examination of the implications of individualised realities and what that meant for competing paradigms. It was a game with deep metaphysics which explained and supported the ruleset, and allowed truly complex questions to be examined.

Briefly, M:tA was intellectually deep (or could have been, obviously some groups never played it that way).

New Mage took away the philosophical underpinnings, dismantled the metaphysics, and basically turned it into a sort of watered-down hedge magic for mortals equivalent.

Turn your brain off, let's play Mage!

Now, for the folks for whom the philosophy and depth were irrelevant, that just meant a simpler system, so who really cares? For the rest it was a complete, utter, total dead loss from start to finish. By that standard even MageRev (which was a fetid shitpile compared to the previous two editions) was better.

So no, those of us who ever cared about the metaphysics never moved on to the new one, and stick with our old copies. They took the one shining, good idea which they had and shitcanned it so hard it echoed.

Wow, I just went through all 13 pages to get up to speed. I think part of the reason DS is not as active anymore is because primarily of two things. The first is that catalyst has their own site (soemthing DS never competed with)and the latest edition change (which happened after their site was created a few years ago). Myself, the reason I stopped posting regularly in the general section was twofold. I was not that intrigued by 5th and have only purchased the main book. After reading through it I liked about 10% of the rules changes (drain codes and initiative). The primary turn off for me was the limits, removal of impact an ballistics for armor, and bricking. The other changes are not meaningful either way. So in the end I decided that I'd just stick with 4.5 and most of the potetntial player base agreed. Also my SR group died, (two players left the area, and I got married). Since then my only game is the PBP here on dump shock.

I won't post on rules, as I am not familiar with them, unless it is 4E. But just like 3E discussions were few and far between when 4th cam out, the same for 5th occured here (think about it, when was the last time someone posted a 2E or 1st Ed thread?). The difference now is that rules discussion can take place not just here but on the official boards. When I got into 4th in the early 2000's, dumpshock was the place to discuss it. When 2E was in its prime, the internet was just a babe, and in first ed there was no interweb. I didn't play much of 3rd.

I think I might have posted 5 times ever on the Catalyst site.

I haven't been back in a while. Still a lot of familiar names, though. 3E got me into the setting, Dumpshock got me into obsession and learning 4E and it's problems. It was good to find some keen and knowledgeable people trying to hash out what could be done within the setting and the game.

I did get into a flame war about the direction of new content, particularly how useful and interesting setting stuff from Loose Alliances was thoughtlessly cut and cauterized in a throwaway line in that South American war book we were bickering about. But I didn't leave because of the tone here, it was more the feeling that there was a shift in the written material. Social, cultural, something. There were some low quality retreads of stuff that made me go back and use second and third edition books for most of my fluff and inspiration and 4th ed for ease of use and so much gear porn. It didn't feel like reading 3E as a kid, or as gritty, frenetic and human as Neuromancer felt.

Dumpshock also felt like the sharing of ideas and resources was giving way to crunch debates that didn't really give us handy NPC stats or cyberwear ideas or plot threads to bring into our games. Having a community is good because we can share strengths, for example I still have Knasser's PDFs of NPCS, maps and sat images from a thread here, and a folder of Squinky's character drawings.

A friend asked me to GM a Shadowrun game recently, so I thought I'd pop back in here for inspiration and to see how it's going so it's interesting to land right in this thread.

just need some hot babes posting in bikinis, then all will be well.

hot enough?