The problem is that your preceding paragraph was this:


So, you did more than a "simple tweak"; you moved into full-on house rule territory. Your third change doesn't occur anywhere in the BBB. You might argue that you stayed true to the spirit of the rules, but that can be said of almost every house rule. In other words, it was broken, it needed fixing, and you applied a house rule. All fine and dandy, but don't forget that it was indeed broken in the first place.

And only one person has even tried to answer my longstanding question: How many house rules does it take before ou're not playing the same game? One person, so far, has said that even one can make that change. Where do you think the line is?


If that's the case, at least half the characters on Dumpshock have "the stuff of legend" in them. Legendary isn't all that special when everyone else is just as good. Without looking it up, can you name all the knights of the Round Table? They all had the stuff of legends, yet I'll bet you can't name more than a handful.

I can name 6 so a handful yes. (I should be able to name more because I've been playing shadows over camalot recently but I mostly just remember their special abilities) However, I also know that depending on your taste in legend, there being over a hundred of them so not remembering all of them hardly makes me cry. Can you name all 300 spartans? However, I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.

You are big on collaborative narratives, in this case the the players have decided on a collaborative narrative that is going to include people who are legendary in their particular skill (something that is allowed by the rules), they should not be surprised when legendary stuff happens.

Your point about everyone and their dog being legendary is stupid. We're not all playing in some big 'dumpshockverse' where sample characters other posters post automatically manifest in my game. My game has 3 players and myself doing the narrative. Thats it. If those three are legendary, I'm not under some obligation to make everyone else legendary.

Obviously narratives that include legendary characters is 'O.K' with the average dumpshockian, again, I'm not sure what the problem or beef is with this?

If you feel some need to boost the NPCs up to legendary, obviously you've choosen to redefine whats typical and whats not from the 'core rules' and have moved to some sort of Homer-verse version of shadowrun, but thats cool too and a narrative option thats available to you.

I agree I went more into house rule, but that's because I tend to house-rules every game I play. But I could have limited myself to the tweaks of the page 69 of the BBB.

And I didn't do it because it was broken, I did it because it didn't fit my playstyle. An if I was just concerned about brokeness, I could have limited myself to the page 69 tweaks and there would have been no houseruling at all.



I don't think it's a matter of number of house rules. One house rule can make the game something totally different (Replace D6 with D10) while a game with 50 house rules can be the same game as the original, with just a few twists. There are also games that are more flexible and let GM adapt them to their playstyle and games that can't be house-ruled without having a huge impact on the whole system.

And finally, I don't consider GM call and official alternate rules as house-ruling.

Larme: I did point out that it was a red herring earlier, but since I seriously doubt any dumpshocker is reading Cain seriously anymore, at least in this thread, I don't mind if we go 'round and 'round.

The point I was making is that it is relatively easy to negate the longshot, even by the luckiest man alive, so not only is Cain's example dependent upon utterly ignoring the defensive test, the fact that every character has edge (with the loophole exception of a profession rating 0 grunt who would never be important enough to justify spending edge to longshot anyway...), and a host of extremely marginal GM calls to support.

The fact that I can make a single debateable call (and the more I look at it, the more inclined I am to let it stand in my games) that not only makes the Longshot ineffective against even utter chumps but actually statistically improbable is just icing on the cake.

Of course, Cain could always just point out that our MR. J could have been running down the docks or some other 'non-vehicular' situation, but then he can't make his very 'wow, look at my incredible negative modifiers' thing work (just like insisting that it be a completely uncompensated HMG, poor stacking of visibility modifiers instead of going with the singular 'target obscured' and other propaganda based descisions). Of course then the J gets an unmodified dodge which, again, makes it relatively easy to hit close to 8 dice once accounted for edge. But he'd rather deflect attention away from this weakness by attacking the 'weaker' target of my interpretation of the rules. Hypocritical of him? Certainly. Harmful? Not at all.


Cain:

I have shown using both In Game and Meta-Game reasons why my reading of the rule should stand. All you've been able to muster so far is a 'It ain't so' defense. Please do me the favor of explaining, using the same rationales that I did why it shouldn't stand. That is: Why passengers in a vehicle that is moving evasively are no harder to hit than passengers in a vehicle that is at a dead stop and metagame reasons why either the players of the passengers or players of the pilot should not be allowed to roll the dice to represent what their characters would be logically doing to defend their vehicle and themselves.

Your reading of the rules is incredibly simplistic as it stands. Your in game idea of the rule is utterly lacking and your metagame reasoning is 'unfun', as the player of the pilot would not be able to use his piloting schtick to increase the party's survival OR the player being shot would not be able to use his OWN defensive abilities to protect himself. One way or another someone gets screwed every time an NPC shoots a non-pilot passenger of a vehicle.

First of all: by canon, there isn't one. There's a penalty for the attacker being in a moving vehicle, but oddly enough, nothing for the target being in one. But anyway, if you read my example, the GM assigned a -3 penalty anyway to reflect the moving/pitching of the vehicle. SR4 has the double-jeopardy issue, where you have two kinds of penalties: dice pools subtractions and threshold modifications. Adding extra defensive dice isn't one of them, so if something is going to be more difficult, you need to do one of the two. Suddenly adding a separate stat to a defense pool isn't either one of them.

This is pretty much the basic ruleset. If you want to make something more difficult in combat, you subtract dice from the attacker's dice pool. Passengers don't get to roll more dice, the attacker rolls less. That answer your question?


No, the stat depictions do that for you. When a skill of 7 is legendary,, yet incredibly easy to reach, that means everyone's legendary. And to paraphrase The Incredibles:"When everyone's super... then nobody will be."

Number doesn't have anything to do with it? With 50 house rules, could a c omplete stranger approach your table, and fit in perfectly? This is part of the reason why SRM has no house rules: the game has to be consistent in order for it to be the same game for everyone. Otherwise, we're all playing different games.

Buzz. Wrong again.

p. 151 SR4, Defense Modifiers Table:
Defender in a Moving Vehicle +3 dice pool

Oops.

But I think that disproves Spike, as well.

I'll allow that it weakens my case strongly.

But it also strengthens my overall case: Since the most we'll ever have to match/beat on the defensive test to render your 'broken longshots' ineffective is 8 dice, you can see how a simple +3 is a massive benefit.

And if I wanted to discard my case (like I said, I like the ruling as it makes sense to me now that I've thought about it... I originally put it out as an example of how to read the rules to make your case, an example of Cain's method of presenting arguments), I could then point out how the way the rule regarding the -2 penalty is written allows me to ignore that in these cases...

It depends on the 50 house rules. For example during a confused and desperate battle I might ask someone to roll a composure test. If he fails, he'll get a -2 modifiers to his rolls due to his panic. That can be considered as a house rule (well I wouldn't, but other would), yet a complete stranger will probably fit in (except if he has an excessively closed-mind). When I GM the Matrix, I GM it in a very open way with a lot of descriptions, using the nodes' metaphors to immerse the player into the virtual world. I allow him to use his Spoof programs to "fast-talk" an ICE and things like that which aren't explicitely described in the BBB. But since everything is described as a (more or less) physical situation, and since it uses the same game system, programs and other elements, a complete stranger will be able to fit in and play his hacker character (and I'm saying it from my personal experience).

This might be a different experience to him, but the difference won't be greater that what he could get between two GM who used exactly the same rules, but handled the fluff a bit differently, because of their own vision of the gaming world.

... And I've yet to see two Savage Worlds GM using the same set of Edge/Hinderances/Powers/other things and not having any of their own.

What happens if he's used to a -6 on his composure test? Even when you slap him with only a -2, he's going to react much more strongly. What happens if he's used to no penalty at all? He might also overreact. We has a huge argument break out IRL when two people disagreed over what a "complete system rebuild" meant. What happens when someone who's used to a very tight Matrix depiction sits at your table? Couldn't he get lost with your open approach?

Not that I'm saying your approach is wrong, mind you. I am saying, however, that different house rules can cause major shifts, even minor ones, in the game you're playing.

I have yet to develop a single new Edge/Hindrance/Power for Savage Worlds, and I know several GMs who are the same. We use the ones in the books, and haven't made up any of our own. There's no need, the game is complete enough on its own.

("you" is used to refer to a conceptual archetype in this post, not any person in particular on this board, and this post represents my strong feelings on player and GM trust being the basis of a good game, not rules)

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If someone plays with the houserule "GM Discretion Cannot Be Applied," they're gonna be pissed off at a game that requires GM discretion. If the people you're playing with aren't able to handle gaming without huge arguements breaking out and disrupting the game, you should find different people with whom to play.

Seriously, folks... why bother arguing tiny, nitpicky interpretations of the SR4 rules in an attempt to show they're flawless? They're flawed. Most rulesets are. They don't happen to be flawed in a way that matters so much that I run a different game, and I don't run games with people who have issues with the concept of "GM Discretion" because it's not worth my time. I'm the guy making up the stats of the goons coming down the hall, the guy deciding when the helicopters show up, the guy deciding what the Threshold for a Data Search is gonna be when you try to dig up dirt on your Johnson.

I can make the game a horrible bloody TPK mess without ever invoking GM Discretion or any of those other horrible things that the BBB says GMs should do to screw over their players and keep them from having a good time, simply by having an enormous truck bomb go off outside the building the players are in and making them roll to resist 293P damage (accounting for distance from blast epicenter). Hell, I can even justify it within a plotline. If I've got Mr. Lucky to squish like a bug, that scenario could easily be changed to the building getting carpet-bombed... when he's spending Edge every time a 200 kg bomb hits the building, he's gonna run out of Edge before a strategic bomber runs out of bombs. And then there's the sweeper teams with flamethrowers that come in to clean up, since those 200 kg bombs were full of gamma-anthrax... all within the plotline, of course.

My point is... the guy running the game, and the players playing in it, are part of a cooperative effort in which everyone is supposed to have a good time. The BBB gives the GM an infinitely wide berth to modify, rewrite, and ignore rules as he sees fit, and to tell players "you can't do that" and "you can't play that character" whenever he sees fit. I use GM Discretion pretty infrequently, preferring to simply roll with the insane results and continue on with the story, but it's a useful tool when I think something's going to cause a problem.

Because I roll with those results, I've seen characters take out a SAM in-flight at their t-bird with the gun they were carrying, kick the armored windshield of a custom limo out of the frame and into the driver so hard it knocked him unconcious, and take out armored vehicles by boarding them and forcing their way inside on the highway. I've seen them leap from skyscrapers into rivers and survive the fall, pick up and throw motorcycles at cars to stop them, and take on (and beat) significantly more powerful opponents relying on luck, balls, and anger alone. And I've seen characters die futilely, violently, and in horrible ways... making the NPC that killed them even more hated, and the PC's drive for revenge even more powerful.

The rules are a loose structure that these stories were created within, and they happened because my players trust me to run a game they want to be a part of. If I think a rules detail is going to shitcan everybody's good time (be it an impossible shot at the Johnson or a critical glitch on the handling of the crew's van), I can toss it out or modify the results as I wish. Rather than dying, Mr J might come back with horrible disfigurement and a lot of cyber and an attitude. Rather than the crew dying, their van may overturn, roll, slide, and the ensuing chaos and wounds could be the trigger for a whole new series of adventures. Nothing says I have to stick to the rules, and I have, in fact, explicit directions to deviate from them in the interest of everyone having a good time. The rules are just there to give some structure to the amorphous blob of ideas, goals, and cool scenes that is a game. If those rules are helpful and beneficial to your story, you should use them. If not, you should replace them, either partially (house rules, GM discretion) or entirely (change of system).

If I've got a player who doesn't like some of my tweaks to the system or uses of discretion/fiat that I felt made it more enjoyable for the group, I talk to him about it and try to figure out where he's coming from. This has led to some changes in how I run the game, and generally contributes to the process. I haven't had to tweak SR4 very much, and my players don't make a habit of exploiting the holes in the system.

On the couple of times when I've had someone who refused to stop massaging the same loophole over and over, despite it becoming incredibly disruptive and causing people to have a lousy time, I've told 'em to take a fucking walk. I've walked, as a player, from GM's whose idea of a good time was turning the rules into a giant monowire maze the players get to stumble around in, and from GM's whose idea of a good time was ignoring the rules whenever it let them jerk around the players. The problem isn't the rules when it gets to that point... it's the people involved. It doesn't matter if you've got a perfect system or no system at all... a game can be made frustrating, aggravating, and infuriating completely within the rules, and can be made enjoyable without any rules whatsoever.

If Shadowrun 4 ain't doing it for you, get something else or get some different people to play with. It works just fine for me, through a combination of being a decent system and my willingness to work around it's failings. If you can't play Shadowrun 4 without killing everyone else's good time by stabbing it repeatedly with an icepick through some hole in the rules, you won't last too long at my table, and I won't feel any remorse when you go out the door.

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For the record, I'm so fucking tired of seeing these arguements go round, and round, and round, and round, and round, and round, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, ad oh-hell-is-this-topic-560-posts-nowium, add-post-countium, turning topics into blasted, bloated wastelands of bile in the process. I'm aware that people have the right, within the terms of service, to post about what they want, argue about what they want, make up whatever examples they want and spend time going back and forth in blooming, cancerous, pointless internet debate about what they want everyone else to believe while having already made up their minds about what they believe. I cannot understand how anybody gets anything positive out of wasting their time on this arguement anymore, and I certainly know that all I get out of it is a pissed-off feeling whenever it happens on Dumpshock, and one more topic I don't want to read.

Larme the level 7 Barbarian: "I would like to spend a Full Round action to perform a Coup de Gras on this thread, which has gone unconscious thanks to Shrike's awesome critical hit. I will use my Jagged Greatsword of Slaughtering +3."

GM: "Ok, you kill it."

Better hope it doesn't have regeneration.

It's "Coupe de Grace," actually. I think coupe de gras translates to something along the lines of "fat strike." Somebody who actually studied the language mentioned that on the D&D boards a while back.

Actually, it would be Coup de Grâce (with the cap on the a) and it means Blow of Mercy (in a more literal and shoddy translation)...

Nah. It'll just permanently burn a point of Edge to survive.

Heh, you're right about the spelling... Coup de Gras would be strike of fat. But this thread is dead all the same!

As the old man checking the oil level in the tanker in Waterworld said, upon the flare being tossed down the hatch:

"Oh, thank God."

Vlad

As Cain mentioned, we've asked him to cease bringing up discussion of his City Master/Mr Lucky/ Shot in the Barrens. He chose it go with the first two and ignore the third. At this point, as per his 'discussion style' we're considering it little more than trolling. To be clear, we're not denying anyone else the right to discuss it. We're telling Cain not to bring it up. Since he can't manage that ...

And now that we've moved into the official thread death area, I'm going to officially close this one off. It's been little more than troll bait since it's inception, and has actually managed to have gotten worse. So this one is done.