Public-key cryptography provides (you're right about this) within some bounds (assumptions about the sanctity of the chain of operation) certain assurances related to authentication and integrity. However, these guarantees are not ironclad, and are not unique to it either.

The one thing that absolutely all encryption systems do, from ROT13 through OTP, is obfuscate the message. Every single one of them. Otherwise it's not encryption. It is the single, necessary, defining criterion of encryption.

I didn't say "public key encryption". I didn't mention a particular encryption field at all. I said just encryption, period. There are many, many ciphers that don't do a damn thing for integrity checking, or authentication.

All the things that you are describing as "lateral thinking" are great, but do not constitute the process of identifying a key by analysis. When you go to actually do battle in the Matrix, what is your target supposed to be? And your opposition? And your method? And your environment? At that level of supposed abstraction, there's no reason whatsoever to believe that the encryption algorithm is any one of the above, unless it's possibly the target in the sense that you're trying to divine what algorithm is supposedly in use in some location or other - an edge case, at best.

No, your probable target is some nebulous data, or access to some system. Your opposition is intrusion detection and response systems, trying to do to you what you're trying to do to the systems hosting your target. Your method is - that's a point of debate, but it sure as hell isn't DECRYPT HARDER!!! My best guess at a plausible approach amounts to abstracted QA, looking for exploitable implementation flaws. And the environment is (and this is the ludicrous part, to me) a metaphor for your target, opposition and methods that is both incredibly lavish and somehow more efficient when driving signals to your brain that are so intense that it could cook the neurons. Nobody has yet been able to explain why the extra few milliseconds or so won by directly sending signals to and from the neocortex should aid in a process that largely depends upon consideration and judgement.

That's great, but you're not saying WHY the magic pixie dust brainterface will be effective over 14.4KHz, more than a mouse and keyboard. You see, it doesn't matter how fast your neurons operate if they're sending signals over a link that only sends a dozen or so bits per millisecond.

So, the floor is yours: why does that brainterface work better at sending bits than a reasonably fast typist? This is the mystery that has not been explained adequately by anybody.



Yes, we got it. The magic pixie dust brainterface is magically effective.

Why?



I'm familiar with the concept of abstraction. Why this abstraction? What does it change? How does it make the pondering that goes into coding unnecessary to the point that the limiting factor is how quickly you can get electrical signals to and from the brain?

Flaser proposed a mechanism where the neural tissues aid in decryption (a dubious position, to say the least). But at least that was a proposal of an underlying reason, however flawed.

Remember, even with ten monitors, a twitch-gaming mouse and a machine that's a tiny tin god, the hard work of a programmer is thinking about causes and effects in long, interwoven chains.

And this raises the question of whether programming is even what is going on when you deck the gibson. Chances are, it's not. Chances are, the programming happened first and now you're implementing your solutions.

So why does a complex neural interface work better than hitting the return key?

Whoever can answer that question in a cogent, coherent fashion gets a cybercookie. It's been a few years since it was first asked, so the cookie might be stale by now...

Because of three things :

1. DNI removes the cumbersome brain-to-keyboard lag in both input and observation. See SR2-3 Matrix initiative for the mechanical demonstration that deckers are flatly acting on speeds that only the most highly specialized augmented sams can hope to match.
2. The Matrix interface created by a cyberdeck is actually performing a huge number of operations, while simplifying them into a perceptual intuitive GUI for the decker.
3. Worldbuilding fiat.

A valid question. In most games, this change would make absolutely no change to the game what so ever, because every hacker character starts the game with Rating 6 programs. The change, however, would be that a Decrypt 6 program wouldn't crack an Encrypt 6 program. The players would need to use some other method to acquire the ability to crack that encryption, be it a Decrypt 7+ program, social engineering or something else would have to be up to them. The goal, however, would be to make the hacking process of some nodes a question of more than simple extended or opposed tests.
I'll admit that I'm also looking at this problem from the perspective of my own game(s), and in my games, I don't throw around high rating programs and device ratings on nodes all the time. Rating 6 is actually top-of-the-line hard-/software, and it's not something you encounter in very many places, and hence it's both more difficult to get your hands on Rating 5+ programs, and in most cases you don't actually need to have them, in order to get by.



I actually agree with you that you can't, and shouldn't, make hacking "realistic", but I would personally prefer a system that retains some level of present time logic and recognition, rather than a completely stylized system where you simply roll a handful of dice against a target number or another handful of dice, and if you succeed, then because "magic inside the black box" you break into the computer system and defeat the system's defences. For the same reason, it's always bothered me that something that's supposed to help keep your information relatively safe from being read by foreign parties, actually only serve to delay said parties access to your data by a few seconds, as compared to you not having protected your system at all. From my perspective, the problem with quickly and easily broken computer systems and their encryption is that the only logical response to this situation is to go back to physical hardcopy typed on typewriters and stored in folders in a relatively safe location, because most of the time it will be more difficult and time consuming for aforementioned foreign parties to access the data that way. It's essentially the same problem as we have with why various forms of cyberware must be accessible via the matrix, when you live in a world where that means that the equipment that's essentially replaced your nervous system and other key parts of your anatomy, can be hacked in seconds, and shut down, killing or crippling you in the process (or rather not killing or crippling you for "magic" reasons...).
So we're back to how we make a system that at one time both makes sense to our current minds as players, without having to resort to "because it does" argumentation, and at the same time function as a fun game mechanic, and still actually work and make sense on within the context of the game setting itself.



To be honest, I would personally prefer to strongly reduce the need for VR hacking, so that it is typically confined to the pre-run legwork section of the game, instead of being something you enter during shooting combat. I know this flies flat in the face of 20 years of Shadowrun, but like you in D&D have the saying "don't split the party", meatspace and VR is essentially that exact thing, and can be compared to a the Wizard in a D&D group teleporting to another plane when combat starts, forcing the DM to run not just one encounter, but two at the same time. Add in Astral space too, and you are now talking about splitting the party into three, and running three separate but connected encounters simultaneously. I know that VR will remain a core part of SR, but personally I would really like to reduce it's importance compared to AR hacking.
Which brings me to another theoretical way to approach the concept of AR hacking in SR. Since we effectively have a situation where it's mainly the hardware and software that's doing the actual hacking, rather than the hacker sitting around and puzzling out how to circumvent the security features of said node, why not take that idea to the next step, and instead accept that the hacking is mainly being done by the hardware and software, and what's really needed, is a hacker that can let the program loose on on the target node, with the right set of tools, and targeting the right part of the defensive code. Basically have the hacker take an action in VR in order to get things underway, and then have the hardware run automatically for the next X number of action phases, whilst the hacker is free to concentrate on not getting shot and/or shooting back at the enemy? Essentially getting an "Agent" to hack the system while he shoots and moves around the battlefield. And yes, that detracts from the concept of the hacker a bit, but it also opens up the option of a hacker letting loose a handful of hacking protocols from AR, and then letting them do their work while he dodges enemy fire and moves along with the rest of the team, which is essentially what we really want to achieve.


(P.S. my appologies if parts of the above doesn't make sense, but I'm somewhat tired at the moment, and English is not my first language, so bear with me pls.)

The point isn't to prove why hacking with your DNI is faster then keyboard and mouse; the point is that the core concede the the cyberpunk genre is that computer networking is de facto standard using a 3d metaphor. The reason why it's faster, better, etc is because it is, because it has to be for the genre to work. Realism doesn't matter here. This is about theming. Stop trying to figure out why something can't be and play along with the idea that it in fact has to work that way and you need to explain why.

So, why is DNI better then a terminal command line window? You tell me.

You're totally right. Splitting the party is a fools errant and that's what the Matrix does. I think what could be better is that the Matrix is just a different way to deal damage, like magic.

You have an army of goons; you can fireball them, shoot with them with an SMG, or hack their brainmeat.

And different goons should be more resistant to different types of damage.

A drone can easily eat small arms fire and spells, but hacking is it's weakness.

A spirit is weak to magic, but strong to fire arms, and probably immune to Matrix.

A corporate mage is strong against magic and hacking but weak to small arms.

Something like that. Turn the game in to a bit of a paper rock scissors match mixing up the different types of damage.

The fools errand here is thinking that everything needs to be scaled around combat, rather than scaled around defeating obstacles.

Drone riggers are just physical damage, same as sams, or pistol adepts.

The Decker's niche is the same as the D&D rogue, scouting, dealing with locked doors, hidden treasure, and all the other subtle assholery that corpsec can come up with.

If you want your decker to have a part to play in combat, teach them to use a pistol.

Nice, but not persuasive for how a conceptual SR6 should look.



Actually, this motivates the opposite answer: once you hit the button/flip the switch/urinate on the pansies it doesn't matter how fast your brainmeats are cycling because the deck's doing the work (and had damn well better be doing it over a blazing fast network, otherwise the deck's speed will be largely of academic interest).




Again, not persuasive with respect to how a supposed SR6 would look.

It isn't. Next question?

More seriously, the question is asked the wrong way round: what does a DNI possibly allow that could in any plausible fashion improve outcomes?

Not raw speed, because by the time you've lovingly rendered everything down to the embroidery on your kimono, a straightforward script will have run through whatever processes you want.

Not programming complexity, because with modern systems the limiting factor is already the programmer's cognitive functions, most notably abstract reasoning and short term memory.

At best, the strongest argument is that it allows for really complex data presentation, which is all dandy but there's no real explanation why it wouldn't be just as good on a fast-refreshing monitor, given that the real magic is what you actually DO with the damn information. And that takes consideration, decision-making and action. Basically, you're marginally speeding up the parts of the OODA loop that are already the fastest. Unless you're arguing that the whole brain, i.e. the decision-making apparatus, is being accelerated, you're talking a couple of percentage points worth of difference, tops.

Take all that combined with the observation that for the last percentage point of advantage, you're putting yourself in a position where one lucky piece of code can kill you, and it makes less sense than playing russian roulette with a taser.

If I were to come up with a justification, the argument would revolve around that presentation of information, but then it would hinge on incredible speeds for data communication (without which you couldn't hope to gather enough data to present to make it worthwhile), thus leaving tortoises just as well off in many cases. However, the good news is that this motivates the case of getting deckers into key sites, rather than having them rape machinery from half a planet away. This at least gives a reason for them to go on runs.

A little video showing how the presentation of binary data can make hacking much easier.

On top of that, you could imagine that the DNI does more than just provide I/O, it could actually have the brain take part in the processing. Like it could complement the decision-making mechanism of the brain by integrating the data directly into it.

There isn't much randomness in this stuff. And if you go a more realistic road, you wouldn't even have to roll dices. That's why I firmly believe that realism isn't a way to go.

I like the game to be a game. So I have nothing against any idea, that doesn't break the suspension of disbelief, that makes the game fun. Even if you roll Attribute +skill when realisticly, you just run a program, and so on...

While the prolonging discussion about crypto is nice, I would like to point out, that before entering new terrain and making new rule, SR6 should more focus on better "craftsmanship" when writing rules.

E.g. right now the German freelancers are in the last steps of finishing the texts for our upcoming book "SOTA ADL" (ADL = AGS). The book will include some new weapons and because of that I again took a look on the weapon accessories and modification rules. While the Core Rules are quite clear in that there are 3 spots and the different weapons can only have certain types of accessories, Run & Gun throws this system aside and introduce 3 additional spots (the two sides and the stock). The problem is, it doesn't specify which weapon class can get which type of accessories/mods. Can now every weapon get every type of accessories/mod, because all weapons have all spots available? Apparently not, as the Core Rules specify certain restrictions. Ok, but what about modification? Well, it seems like not all weapons can get every type of mod, as the infobox gives you certain restrictions... but only for Holdouts and Light Pistols.

Sure, the individual description of the accessories/mods give you some hints, which weapon class can have it, and which not, but not every description does so. A folding stock for example is required to be put in the stock slot - where else - but it doesn't specify which weapon classes have this spot, and which does not. So can it be attached to every weapon, that already has a stock? Or, which would make more sense, which doesn't? And then I have to think about, that a folding stock gives you +1 RC but a fixed stock doesn't, and that they put several vital accessories/mods in a different book, that I they doesn't provide the information which range the under barrel weapons in Hard Targets use, that there is no list of weapons from the Core Rule book and their standard accessories/mods,... and that's basically the point where I want to set everything on fire.

Maybe I was missing a page in one of these books, or in a different one, that answer all these questions and fill this gaps, but then I ask, why isn't it in the place where it really belongs? Sure, this is just a tiny piece of all the rules, and there are certainly hundred other examples of bad "craftsmanship" in rule writeing (don't get me started with the fluff), but that needs to be fixed. You need everything at the right spot, at the right time and not fifty bits and pieces that you have to put together yourself.

This cannot be said enough...

Agreed, I think that most magic should fall into the same category. Let the combat specialists be the combat specialists. The DnD-ish idea of a fireball carbonising your opponents is ill-placed in this context.

I would make a serious plea for preparation being a requirement for your magicians as well as your deckers. Prepare a known crack on the probable surveillance cameras so that you can use them for tactical map overlays? Great. Prepare an alchemically stored fireball-grenade? Excellent. Kick it all off on the spur of the moment? I don't buy it.

Hacking should not be about bricking someone else's gear so that the Hacker can feel relevant in combat.
The Magic does not bother me all that much.

It is the attitude about Characters (of any stripe) that does. How many times have you heard "Unless you have maxed out your skills at start, you are just gimping yourself..."

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen the uber-optimized Magician with 20+ Dice in Casting and a Magic of 6/7 right out of the gate; and it irritates me no end.
Or The Super Military Sniper that can shoot the wings off of a gnat at a mile, but cannot actually function in any of the other military skills that would have been required as part of the training.

And you see it in the advice given on character builds, both here and on the official forums. When anyone puts together a charactetr that looks realistic and could actually, you know, function in the world of Shadowrun, the players are told that the character is crap and to scrap it for a more optimal build that, while may be uber whammadyne in its core one or two skills is totally ineffective at actually living in the world in which they live.

Sorry... I get irritated about all the complaints about how the system is broiken, but it is truly only broken for the extreme edge builds that are out there. Sadly, those extreme edge builds are often the ones that hit the table because the players are convinced that to do otherwise is character suicide.

It absolutely is, unless you're going to do SR6 from a completely blank slate. The world still exists, and still has a cruft of previous decisions piled on top of each other as far as how it works. Unless you're planning to do your theoretical SR6 as a blank slate with the brand name attached, you're stuck with them having existed.

If you want to keep the same playerbase, you're stuck with there being some basic tropes of both the setting and the game world, such as mind/machine interfaces, working magic that can affect the physical plane, and the Awakened races.



This is the stuff that absolutely drives me crazy, and is why I don't play or GM at cons anymore and am picky about what players I invite to my games. One super-minmaxed pornomancer can render most of the rest of the team obsolete in short order.

BS because even a rogue in D&D can use their core abilities in combat and can even use them to help reinforce their role in combat. A Decker doesn't get the same benefit. And considering the the majority of rules in all editions of SR has always been dedicated to combat, odds are the core resolution mechanics in SR just so happens to be combat.

Not to mention by saying the only way to contribute to combat is with a gun just forces people to get their right arm cut off to get a maxed out cyberarm to do all their shooting.

People should be allowed to have options, not be pigeonholed to be the most optimized character.

Deckers should have different options in combat, but I think the wireless/bricking thing was an atrocious idea.

Now first off, I think the Matrix needs to be more integrated into normal combat. Tacnets should be much cheaper and more common. Meat world combat should involve sensors, drones, team members feeding data to each other, jamming, and trying to hack the other side's tacnet while protecting your own.

Deckers should be doing things like getting an aerial view of the battle from a flyspy drone, while using that view to send indirect fire from another drone's grenade launcher. They should be sending fake orders to the corporate guard unit's goggle displays, trying to get that main door to open, and on and on. Obviously, this hinges on a lot of things being hackable and operating wirelessly. But wireless makes sense for interconnected tacnets and remote-controlled things like drones. Deckers should still invest in a small arms skill (most characters should), but they should have plenty to do in combat - although like mages or covert ops specialists, they are better as tactical multi-taskers than as front-line fighters.



If making a character with the "starting maximum" breaks the system, then the system is broken. That's precisely the point where the system needs to be balanced. I mean, I would agree more if you were talking about exploiting ambiguous rules, but the example you gave (mage with Magic: 6 and spellcasting dice pool of 20) is some pretty meat-and-potatoes optimization that won't keep the character from being decent in a whole lot of other areas. So if that is too overpowering, then the rules need to change so that you can't make that build. You don't make a game where you can make Superman, with the expectation that players will go "Nah, that's too powerful, I'll make Spiderman instead".

It doesn't force anything. The 'necessity' of the cyberarm is entirely based around the idea that everyone at the table should be single-skillset maximum dicepool autists, and thus the need to stack bonuses to be able to effect the things that are more than an exercise in counting pips for the combat monster. As it stands, the vast majority of the opposition presented in the SR5 base book is laughably simple for what the internet would consider a 'good build' to deal with.

This is, at the end of the day, a design issue because the game mechanics do not sufficiently punish monofocused specialization and instead leave it to the GM to present the players with challenges that require more than 'I roll a metric shit-ton of dice to shoot my rifle.'

A sufficiently toxic player can always turn every problem in SR into a shooting problem.

This I'd probably have to disagree with. On my end I'd really have very little problem with hackers actually not being able to deal any kind of direct damage via the Matrix. I agree that there should be some way for them to contribute in combat, using their speciality, but I'm much more onboard with Glyph's vision in this regard:

"Now first off, I think the Matrix needs to be more integrated into normal combat. Tacnets should be much cheaper and more common. Meat world combat should involve sensors, drones, team members feeding data to each other, jamming, and trying to hack the other side's tacnet while protecting your own.

Deckers should be doing things like getting an aerial view of the battle from a flyspy drone, while using that view to send indirect fire from another drone's grenade launcher. They should be sending fake orders to the corporate guard unit's goggle displays, trying to get that main door to open, and on and on. Obviously, this hinges on a lot of things being hackable and operating wirelessly. But wireless makes sense for interconnected tacnets and remote-controlled things like drones. Deckers should still invest in a small arms skill (most characters should), but they should have plenty to do in combat - although like mages or covert ops specialists, they are better as tactical multi-taskers than as front-line fighters."

What if DNI works because it sidesteps the limits of reasoning? Why use the darn complicated sensorium in the first place, what does it bring to the table? Animal instinct and subconscious analysis. Your brain didn't evolve to contemplate math problems and algorithms... Simsense bridges that gap, translating abstract concepts like code into perceptions your brain more readily digests. Sight, smell, touch, even your sense of space (hence why everything is 3D or 2.5D) is brought to bear to better represents what would otherwise be incomprehensible.

Is it faster than silicone? No it isn't... but let's not forget that unlike a program you can actually think, which is why programmers write programs instead "clever programs" (AI 1.0) writing even more clever programs (AI 2.0, etc). This also explains why the use of ASIST is so widespread: it makes metahumans much more effective at intellectual tasks as it leverages the "animal brain" to better grasp complex issues.

This also explains why Matrix sculpting is such an issue: it's not graphics design, it's translating complexity into impressions that a metahuman's mind can interpret. Everyone's matrix impression will be slightly different. By embedding certain patters - say iconography, sounds, etc. - you can influence the result but it's not a certain thing. Good iconography is not just a "skin", it's an effective metaphor that turns complex data into something palatable for your average Joe in the office.

Why sight, smell, sound and touch? Because that's what your brain is used to... what if you tweaked your input, employed synesthesia to better convey something that has no easy perception analogue? Now you're starting to venture into dangerous territory, stuff that gives you a very nasty headache (biofeedback). Now what if, you not only consumed the raw impressions, but setup a control system so you directly tweak the sensorium mapping on the fly? Suddenly you get a personally tweaked version of the data that maps onto your brain... however since all control system are susceptible to feedback, this is a much more dangerous setup. This is what hot-sim really is.

Yes... so very much this... Kudos to Glyph.

Great. Fantastic. Running on instinct is the reason it's so fast. It's too fast for reasoned consideration to be the reason for success, it's hindbrain, twitch reflex stuff.

I have a new deck. I tell it what to do, and the cultured nodule of rat neurons inside it actually takes the risk. Oh no, the rat neurons got fried? I remove the rat neuron module, replace it with the next. Hell, maybe I have a custom deck with five parallel rat neuron nodules so that if one fries, it's still business as usual.

RAIN. Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodules. I'm a pioneer!

And I still just need a screen and pointer device to tell the nodules what their goals are.

Moving on ...

(Oh, and what could be more cyberpunk than nodules of neurons acting as your agents? Very thematic goodness. Can you, individually and personally, get an ASIST view of the Matrix? Sure, but why the hell would you? Let the rats do it. Or roaches, if you're really low rent. If you're all fancy, clone your own to have human neuron nodules, for all the difference it makes.)

Uhm... no. That's not what I wrote... or if it came across like that then I wasn't succinct enough. If anything et all, then what I propose is just a riff on your idea that ASIST makes QA easier.

It's not fast. It doesn't make you faster either. What it does is leverage your hind-brain to tackle complexities your conscious mind can't grasp because they fall outside the 7±2 limit. Does it make you smarter? No, it only makes you perceive things easier. Putting a rat brain in there won't solve anything as the rat was already too dumb to grasp any of this.

People use similar tricks anyway, like how a memory palace allows you to map concepts onto a spatial space and memorize huge quantities of information. Heck, there are myriads of engineering tools like Veitch-Karnaugh tables or Feynman diagrams that are all about presenting information in a certain way so you have a better grasp of it. Imagine if you could map protein folding onto a person's proprioception (the ability to tell where your body parts are, relative to other body parts)! It's not VR because your intentionally making unreal impressions... but you can leverage senses and modes of "though" that are normally inaccessible. When I talk about instinct, I refer to all the things your brain normally does that's unrelated to conscious reasoning. It won't make the solution to a problem "magically" pop into your head, but it will give you all these extra impressions that allow your consciousness to find and reason about patterns, symmetries and connections that'd normally get lost in noise of raw data.

If you ask why one can't enjoy the same benefit with VR goggles and feedback gloves, the answer is that a lot of these "non-traditional" senses don't have handy input ports like your eyes or ears to feed data into. I'm talking about stuff like balance, temperature sense, pressure sense, proprioception and we haven't even started to explore synesthesia or hijacking internal senses for our purposes.

Also keep in mind that ASIST should have a use outside hacking, else it'd never have gained the widespread adoption it enjoys, hence why I'm trying to come up with something that's not strictly an anti-security feature.

What you describe above is, idly, exactly how an ASIST-based RCA works. It converts vehicle sensor data into sensory perception that the rigger can then act on.

As far as other uses for the tech, people always forget SimSense is a thing.

Technically, it is the same ASIST technology behind Matrix hacking, simsense entertainment and skillsofts. If you look at the timeline, ASIST was developed in 2018 and simsense entertainment came out as early as 2024, while Echo Mirage and other hacking projects were still not fully operational before 2029 (this was some forard thinking in the 1980 to consider that entertainment would come before military applications, which is a switch that did not happened before the 2000 IRL).

The third leg is often overlooked. Skillsoft technology has huge implications. Actually, you could even say those implications are actually so huge they completely disrupt the setting. with regards to people use of the Matrix, what is the difference for a corporate executive between downloading Ares Arms Operating Overview.pdf file and downloading an Ares Arms knowsoft ? In the previous editions, the answer obviously was "having a chipjack," but it's nonetheless an interesting question.

I can picture ASIST-assisted hacking owing more traction from skillsoft-like features than from the simsense virtual reality. Anyone who's a bit into programming know how hard it can be to wrap one's mind around what a piece of code does and how it does it. And, for those who tried it, how insanely hard it can be to do so with only the binary. Imagine now if you could get the equivalent of, say, Apple SSH implementation as a knowsoft, created on the fly right from the latest binary. Not just like having read the code several times, but knowing it down to its tinniest details. When it comes to crack it, it would certainly help.

As a side note and as a I mentioned earlier, I would support rules that makes skillsofts more like a "class feature" of hackers and the likes, which among other things give them a hackerly thing to do in combat. My current house rule for SR4 is a Complex Action where you roll Logic+Software to increase activesofts rating on the fly, which it rarely comes into play as the hacker is also allowed to roll Electronic Warfare to give the team a map of nearby comlinks and other devices, giving away most opponents number and position, and then spam comlinks, radios, cybereyes or smartlinks with notifications and corrupted data packets to give those opponents penalties (as I consider such temporary spamming more acceptable as a threat than outright bricking).

That's actually something I overlooked previously, because skillsofts haven't really been good enough to be worth their cost rules wise.

Personally what i would love to see in a 6th edition or a 30th anniversary one would be:

Take a stance on what runner are. Are they scum barely scrapping by? Or are they so above human that running is more a moral stance than necessity?

Get rid of the slow to crawl character advancement and of the karma reward from 5th. Shadowrun work under the assumption that players are gonna game the same characters for 5+ years and thus the character advancement option are slow to a crawl. You can either use the mission rewards that are incredible slow. Or use the system is the book that is a over complicated mess in which, apparently, the negotiation is in a Schrodinger flux until the runner end their run as their payment depends on the highest dicepool the runner face. Which kind forces this



The fact that playing smart is gives you less money that going dicepool vs dicepool means player tend to overspecialize because the bigger their dicepool, the bigger the opposition dicepool and thus more karma. Couple that with the slow character progress and high cost of karma makes many player try to get their character as overspecialize as possible from chargen because otherwise they never gonna reach the level of proficiency they want.

And when there a minmax over specialist in the party the DM has to make the enemies match him, which causes that the guy who just have 2 in pistols to be barely proficiency might as well not try which reinforces the overspecialist mentality in a vicious circle.

And when one ask for the solution for the high over specialist power of minmax PCs most people suggest to throw more and more corp sec at them, which make the game an attrittion game just like the expansion of SR: hong kong. To counter the min max combat pc, the dm has to put twice the numbers of NPCS which as they are created as PC means a lot of strain on the DMs part as he has to consider their stats, weapons, skills and limits aside from the rule in a already rules heavy ruleset. And while that number can counter the minmax PC, they just overwhelm the non over specialist PC.

So what i would like to see if different, and oversimplified rules of NPC that function entirely different from PCs. The system i seem doing this right if FFG star wars in which the solution to too powerful PCs is also to throw more and more NPCs as them but said groups of NPCs use such simple rules that i could add 50 and they would never slow the game that much.

I'm a huge fan of 7th Sea's concept of Brutes and Villains. Villains being actually statted enemies with personalities that are a compelling threat to the group or individuals, and brutes being a single stat line for a group of relatively faceless thugs of a type, say gangers or guards.

You mean like the Grunts for 4th ed SR?

The way I see it, Shadowrun has three fundamental problems that are built pretty far into the core of the system and/or setting and really need to be resolved.
1) Awakened characters (especially Mage's) can advance beyond the hard limits on everyone else.
2) The Matrix (and electronic infrastructure in general) is a kludged together mess that doesn't work from a rules perspective and makes near zero sense from an in system setting perspective.
3) Non awakened physical world characters get shafted hard.

Now explanations and issues.

1) It's a pretty fundamental part of the setting that Awakened characters can do things that no non awakened character can. The Great Ghost Dance was a bunch of naked humans throwing out more power than every human built nuclear weapon in real life would release if detonated, something bound by the rules of physics just can't match that. And that is a bunch of newly awakened, untrained, humans at the low ebb of the awakened mana cycle - what do you expect a dragon that has had upwards of five thousand years to master magic to be able to do?

The side effect of that is that you can't really nerf the fundamental power of magic in SR while still having rules that respect the world and its fluff. A player character Mage needs to be theoretically capable under the rules of doing things like leveling cities. It doesn't matter that the player will never achieve that capability but it still kinda needs to be there. This means that you need to solve the disparity between awakened/non awakened character advancement on the non-awakened side. Which is not to say that a lot of things with magic shouldn't be tweaked or changed.

2) The Matrix doesn't function. I blame most of this on legacy issues and the changes in technology that have occurred in the real world over the lifespan of SR but that doesn't change the fact that it does not work on pretty much any level. Why can't a corp whip up their own custom hardware and software that is flat out fundamentally incompatible with the "standards" and then use that for their extraterritorial site security? Why can't you isolate you pop a hardware based one time encryption pad into your smart gun and comlink so that the only way to hack the smart gun is to hack the comlink? Why can you hack that facilities doors with a wireless signal when they are controlled through an isolated hardline fiberoptic network built into the walls? I could spend hours listing out all of the ways that the Matrix makes little sense but it's not worth it. The whole thing needs to be nuked, salted, and redone from the ground up in some manner that works. Setting wise my suggestion is that a group of Technomancers finds out that Deus isn't really as dead and buried as everyone thinks and that all of those SI's running around are really bits of Deus working on an Apocalypse and so use something akin to a Resonance Realms Search to destroy the very concept of his code from the matrix, and as a side effect wipe out pretty much every single automated system the world over - it gives you an in setting excuse to start from scratch and build something that works at least (suggestions for that will be below).

3) You have two people, one has a gun and the other has magic. The one with the gun pulls the trigger and a chemical reaction causes a small piece of metal to accelerate up to around the speed of sound in an instant. Whether or not the one firing the gun is the best shot who ever lived or a kid who has never touched a gun before in his life, the power in that little piece of metal will be identical simply because the power is not coming from the individual but from that chemical reaction. The more skilled marksman will be able to apply that power with much greater accuracy and skill but once he is hitting the weakest spot on a given target greater skill ceases to matter entirely. On the other hand you have a mage with a spell to apply kinetic energy along a specific vector and over a specific area. In the hands of a weak mage he might only be able to impart enough power to accelerate a little piece of metal to 100 kph but in the hands of a great dragon he might be able to impart so much power that the little bit of metal destroys itself against the air around it. In the case of the mage the power is not coming from a chemical reaction but from a source potentially far more powerful. Now nothing stops the skilled mage from being able to place his little piece of metal just as accurately on target as the skilled marksman.

Awakened characters have personal, inherent, POWER that exceeds what anyone non awakened can do, and in a lot of ways this really can't be neatly resolved. The non-awakened are tool users, their POWER is based on what tools they have. Both Awakened and non-awakened are limited by only being able to become so skilled at using what power they have available, but where they differ is that the non awakened can personally increase their power (without being reliant on any infrastructure) once they become as skilled as possible.

Rules wise we can't let a non awakened spend karma to keep pushing up their firearms skill without limit, or their physical strength, simply because you reach a point where you are as skilled (or strong) as the laws of physics allow you to do. But we have to resolve the disparate advancement situations.

Now solutions:
First up get rid of the idea that Technomancers are something different from Awakened characters. That conceit just makes little sense setting wise and breaks a pretty important rule of writing alternative history/sci-fi - have as few fundamental differences from reality as you can get away with. There are now three types of Awakened: Mage, Adept, and Technomancer. Mages are your traditional spell slingers of old, using their magic to manipulate the physical and spirit worlds. Adepts are your traditional self enhancement casters, using their magic to improve their own capabilities to superhuman levels. Technomancers are mage/adept hybrids who's magic is focused on interacting with machines and improving their ability to do so. The Resonance Realms are just tech based metaplanes.

The benefits of doing this are that you massively simplify setting metaphysics and also give a good IC reason for why technomancers can do weird things, while also giving you ways to potentially expand them and play them differently. An initiated technomancer with the right metamagic might become able to do things like open the door that is hardware locked and isolated simply by laying his hand on it and interfacing with it - without caring that there is zero wireless connectivity.

In the end this is less a rules thing than a setting thing but it would make everything much more consistent and make running games easier.

Next up, make a new attribute. Not sure of the name but I think of it as "Envoy" because Altered Carbon inspired it. This is the Rigger attribute like Magic is the Awakened attribute and represents how well the individual can adjust to different physical bodies. You still need the appropriate tech to "jump in" but once you do, this represents how well you can manipulate the body. Also like magic, this can be "initiated". High end would be things like permanent body jumping via a hot sim link with someone else. Imagine a 1 being like you are playing a video game as you are jumped into the drone while a 6 is you being the drone and post 6 is when you start being able to twist your mind to be ever less drone like things. Theoretical high end for this would be becoming an e-ghost living as a disembodied consciousness, perhaps even multiple bodies at once.

Now the Matrix. For the average wageslave their comlink is nothing but an I/O port with limited data storage capabilities. It has the hardware and software to allow them to access the Matrix and that's about it. They pay a corp a fee and get access to the cloud. All of the processing power for everything from their OS to their Edit programs to whatever comes from the corp's servers. Think about nVidia's system where you can offload your games graphics processing onto their servers for a fee and you get the idea. Of course all of their programs and everything else are generally supplied by whatever corp whose cloud that they are using and they can, of course, pay for more and more capability. Hacking the average person is really nothing more than stealing (or faking) their access codes so that you can then play in their bit of the cloud. Hacking this will let you screw the individual on a personal scale but it can't really be leveraged into a systemic threat or capability, the corp security for the cloud service as a whole is what you need to beat for that. Just because I hacked Joe Blow's Amazon Cloud account doesn't mean that I have any capability to hack John Chung's Amazon Cloud account or to effect the cloud as a whole, although I might be able to use Jo Blow's account to manipulate my way into accessing Jane Blow's account.

For the average corp (and pretty much anyone who wants any security vis a vi the corps running the cloud services) they have their own physical hardware. On the hardware side you run into two competing considerations - cost and size. The Shadowrun world is advanced enough that you can make a comlink sized device with enough power to crush the combined processing power of everything on real life Earth, you can do things like build a solid crystal molecule by molecule and then use an electron microscope to tweak that crystal on the atomic and even subatomic levels to build something using light and quantum effects as the medium of processing. That is your rating 10+ milspec response chip and building it takes a lot of extremely expensive high end infrastructure while designing it means you need fifty PHD's and a decade of time. So yeah, for a billion nuyen you can get your smartphone that is a full on UV host. Or you can spend a few million or so nuyen and fill an area the size of your living room with a solid crystal box that is only engineered to molecular level accuracy and have an equally capable processor. So the little corp (or baby hacker) now has their private hardware and this limits the software it can run but it also gives you freedom & security. Which most people promptly lose to some extent when they go and buy an OS (or Firewall or whatever) from one of the corps to run on their hardware, but so what if that SK operating system will let SK learn everything on your secure R&D server - that doesn't matter if it is locked in an isolated vault with no outside access. You can also, however, code your own software from the ground up and with pretty much whatever degree of interoperability that you choose.

The benefit of a cloud service is that you can do things like pay NeoNet a hundred nuyen and suddenly your Edit program is running as if it is rating 10 and on a rating 10 system. The issue is that NeoNet will also know exactly what you have done and that the cloud service doesn't offer hacking and cracking programs to the general public - so you better have managed to convince NeoNet that you are licensed by them for those programs and that you are using them in a manner that doesn't contravene any of their rules, contracts, or CC regulations.

Now onto hacking. The first method of hacking can be done by agents, by AR, by keyboard, etc. You code up (or get) a program that is specifically designed to hack what you are targeting and then use it. Ares has released a new OS and Firewall and you want to hack it this way so you go and pay some code slinger to make you a specific program to hack that firewall and operate with that OS and then you use it. This is a Skill+Program Rating dice pool. Now you can buy a Hacking program which will come with the specific programs for hundreds (or thousands or whatever) of different OS's/firewalls/programs and many are even regularly updated but it only works for whatever it contains. You can't use that Edit program you loaded onto your comlink to Edit data on that Ares OS because it only works with MTC operating systems, for example. Now for the average matrix criminal this is not much of an issue, 99% of the world is using stuff coded by the big boys and its easy to buy the relevant tools to work with it. The problem is that all of the secure stuff that Shadowrunners are trying to hack is running code that isn't public knowledge and probably isn't in those utilities, which means the script kiddie or agent is going to be stopped cold.

This is where VR comes in and what separates a decker from a script kiddie. Rules wise you create a Virtual Reality attribute that can be initiated just like Magic or "Envoy" which represents how at home you are in VR and how intuitively you work within the virtual system. All matrix dice pools while in VR are VR+Skill+Program. To use a program in VR it has to be a VR program because such code is somewhat fuzzy and is built from the ground up to work with a metahuman mind - your brain (both meat and knowledge wise) becomes part of the program when you use it. The advantage of this is that the code is a little fuzzy. So you use that VR Analyze program and you can semi intuitively "see" the flaws in that system, or your editing of that picture subconsciously adds in those little bits that the mind sees without ever realizing it - in VR you are working with living code. So a decker can be in a zero zone MTC facility running code that has never been seen before anywhere outside that facility and still hack it/ work within that system while a script kiddie wouldn't even be able to get the system to talk to him. A decker can also create those script kiddie programs, so he can do something like scout out that corps systems and then code up the right programs so that he can hand everyone on his team comlinks able to hack those corp systems. VR starts at 3 IP and HotSim is 4 IP, you can also code programs in VR using VR+Logic+Skill and at 3 (or 4) times the listed speed (said speed assuming 1 IP).

One issue with deckers on runs is that they are often off in their own little worlds and not really taking part in the physical run. My solution is the following.

Augmentations are Cyberware, Bioware, or Nanoware. Cyberware is essentially gross physical alteration, you can replace your bones with titanium and that will offer a level of strength that bio and nanoware just won't ever match. The downside of cyber is that it is obvious but the upside is that it offers a level of power and capability that the other two really can't match. Bioware now includes geneware (the deltagrade version of bioware now) and is all about manipulating biology for greater (or new) abilities - the benefit is that it is very low impact and very hard to detect but the downside is that it just can't offer capabilities as strong or exotic as what cyber can do (your bones might be ten times as strong as normal but they still aren't titanium, you might be able to spit poison but your eyes still can't shoot laser beams, etc.) and the real top of the line bioware won't even cost you essence (if you have the right delta clinic to do the work and are willing to drop the millions of nuyen required). Nanoware is the hybrid in a lot of ways in that it can offer capabilities that bioware simply can't and is much harder to detect than cyberware. Nanoware can't give you an arm made of steel, but it can let you replicate the fingerprints of someone else as you walk through a security system. The reason that I mention all of this though is the following.

You can use nanoware to replace your entire nervous system (including your brain). 4 IP, rating 10 skill wires and the ability to improve all skills to rating 12, the ability to have your body act under an agent's control while your mind is unconscious, the ability to turn off pain and ignore virtually all stun damage. Of course this costs a shit ton of nuyen and it flat out destroys Magic ability (Magic is now 0 and can't ever be raised, also provides immunity to spirit possession) but one other thing it does is allow you to be active in both the meat and Matrix simultaneously without issue and that in the matrix you now have 4 IP at all times. You don't gain the ability to jump into other bodies (well unless your Envoy attribute allows you to) because your consciousness still needs the specific physical state provided by your brain but instead of meat your brain has become machine.

What that means is that in the later game you can have the hacker with you and still have him participating in the physical run while also allowing him something to do with all of that karma.

For Streetsam's, cut the essence cost of cyber by about half and don't be afraid to make powerful cyberware. By the time the Adept is initiating for the second or third time the Streetsam should pretty much be a Cyberzombie (without the mental issues). The high end street sam has about one piece of meat still left (if that), his brain. His blood, nervous system, and skin are nanites. His bones are exotic allows. His muscles are advanced synthetics strong enough to punch straight through solid stone, his senses are a holistic and synergistic whole that seamlessly integrates basically every sensor in the game. Rules wise he has hardened armor that stacks with any worn armor and even naked he is pretty much outright immune to everything short of long arms with armor piercing ammo, and that nanite blood heals him up damn fast while he is basically flat out immune to stun damage.

The street sam trades long term power for immediate power and accepts a more limited potential in exchange for much faster power growth when compared to an Adept. Given time (and enough karma) and an Adept can exceed all of that while physically being unmodified human but when he starts out the Adept is much weaker at straight up combat (and much, much, better at infiltration and the like).

Once the Street Sam has hit his physical world limits he can start upping VR or Envoy and continue to grow in that way.

Now onto the thorny issue of magic. Let's start with Adepts. Give them a 1 point power that can be taken repeatedly and when taken raises the normal maximum for an attribute for their metatype by 1 - so in effect an Adept has no theoretical limits on how high he can push his attributes. Also give them the ability to go beyond 4 IP by initiating - my off the cuff starting point is that an Adept can have 1 IP for every 2 points in Initiative and that they have a 1 cost power that permanently raised their IP by 1 (at no resource cost besides spending the point to take it). Again, theoretically, this would allow the Adept unlimited IP's. Don't let them continually push skills through this method, they are still capped at 6 ranks in a skill (7 with aptitude) and maybe with a power that lets them (temporarily and with cost) double their ranks in a skill (say 1 point of unresistable physical damage in exchange for 1 roll at double skill and that can't be healed until the next sunrise/sunset). Do give them a pretty serious potential healing power, like for every rank in it they heal one point of stun damage per round and 1 point of physical damage per hour.

Mages, mages, mages. Dealing with them needs to be split into two separate issues; spirits and everything else. Sorcery isn't really a major problem, I mean sure it's powerful but it is still limited in a lot of ways so I think that only relatively minor changes need to be made to it. First, when a mage learns a spell they gain a skill for that spell at rank 0 (so you learn Fireball and thus now have a Fireball Skill). For every rank you have in a spells skill you reduce your drain from casting that spell by 1 (and this is after you roll drain resistance), skill is capped by your Magic rank. Whenever you cast a spell it has Force x 2 drain, this damage is reduced by 1 for every net hit you get on a Willpower+(relevant mental attribute) vs. spell's force roll. So you cast a Force 6 Fireball and are facing 12 points of drain, you now roll for drain resistance with Willpower+Logic (for example) and since you have 5 ranks in each you roll ten dice. Since the spell is Force 6 it rolls six dice to your 10 and for every net hit you gain you subtract 1 from that 12 points of drain (let's say that you got three net hits, so are facing 9 points of drain). Now you subtract your Fireball skill from that drain, lets say 5 in this case. You now take 4 points of damage (which you can allocate to either the Stun or Physical damage tracks however you so choose). This makes Sorcerery more of a karma sink but also, potentially at least, lets the mage easier to both play and GM for. Mage's are much more incentived to focus on a relatively small number of spells (especially if they are pushing high force ratings) or cast generally weaker spells. I would also add minimum force requirements to spells, especially ones that don't scale easily with force. Something like fireball is fine for no minimum because greater force scales linearly with greater damage, but something like invisibility is much more an issue as you are either invisible or not and I really want to get away from every spell having it's own +X drain modifier (it slows down and complicates the game). In the case of Invisibility I would say that every sense you want to be invisible to requires 1 point of force and that physical invisibility (as opposed to mental) costs double the force. So, for example, you could be invisible to the naked eye and silent for 2 force if you are trying to hide from metahumans but it would require a 4 force spell to do the same to cameras/microphones.

Now the tricky issue of Spirits. I will admit upfront that I am pretty much tossing the system and starting from the ground up in a lot of ways. Spirits are their Spirit Forumlas, change one and you change the other.

The first type of spirit is the transitory type, these last until the next sunrise or sunset. These spirits are ephemeral things drawn from the mage themselves. For every rank you have in Summoning you can choose one more trait from the list for your spirit to possess (different senses, a skill, a critter power, whatever. most of writing these rules would be in this area. some traits would cost more points), your rank in regards to that specific spirit is capped by the Force you summon it at (and you can not summon one of these spirits with Force greater than your rank in Summoning). Once you have that done the mage temporarily reduces their Magic attribute by 1 per point of force of the spirit, this reduction lasts until the spirit ends (next sunrise/sunset, the spirit is disrupted, the mage chooses to end it). The mage takes 1 point of drain (resisted by Willpower+mental attribute) for every point of the spirits force. Fluff wise the mage is essentially splitting off a bit of their own essence and knowledge temporarily to act independently of them, the benefit of this kind of spirit is that it is utterly loyal to the mage and has no real limit on services (although using some of its traits/powers might reduce its force).

The next kind of spirit are the ones that call the metaplanes home and exist independent of a mage. To summon one of these requires that you know its True Name, this is done by studying the spirit or its spirit formula and making a Summoning+Intuition/Logic/Charisma (depending on tradition) extended test with the difficulty dependent upon the force of the spirit and you can not learn a spirits True Name this way unless your Magic is at least equal to the force. If you succeed on that test then you will them be able to summon that specific spirit at any time with a Summoning+Magic extended test (1 minute intervals) with a threshold equal to the spirits force. Once the spirit is summoned you immediately make a Binding+Magic opposed test against the spirits Force x 2, if you succeed then the spirit is compelled to your service until the next sunrise/sunset or for one task (duration not to exceed Magic days). Note that if the spirit is already bound to a task or service by some other mage then the summoning threshold isn't the spirits force but the Binding+Magic ranks of whomever has it bound. You take one point of drain per point of force of the bound spirit, resisted by Willpower+attribute.

The above are the short duration, field use, spirits. The mage calls them up in the field, they are relatively weak, they don't last long. Now we get into the real power of spirits, the longer term and higher power stuff.

First up is creating your own, permanent, spirits. This is kinda like ally spirits in SR4. You make an extended skill test to devise the appropriate spirit formula using Arcana+Logic. Then you make a Summoning+Magic test (extended test, 1 day) with a threshold equal to the Force of the desired spirit to summon a materialized copy of that Spirit Formula. This must be done inside an appropriate magical lodge or the materialized formula will disappear instantly, and again drain is the spirits force. Once you have that materialized formula you can make a Binding+Magic test (1 day, threshold equals force) to summon and bind the spirit, drain is same as above. This spirit will accomplish either a number of tasks equal to your magic so long as no individual task takes more days that your ranks in Binding to accomplish, will serve you for 1 day per point of binding (unlimited services in that time period), or can be bound to one specific task for Binding+Magic months. Note that the spirit formula doesn't disappear until it leaves your lodge or you end it so it does not need to be re-created every time. The maximum Force of a spirit created in this manner is your Magic.

If you do the above you can also permanently bind the spirit to a task for its Force in karma or to your general service for 1 point of your magic (permanently lost).

Next up is binding already existing spirits to long term service. For this you need the creatures True Name (gained by studying the spirit, seeing a copy of its spirit formula, being taught it by someone who knows it, or via metaplanar quest). Once you have that you summon a copy of its Spirit Formula with an opposed test (Summoning+Magic vs. Spirits Force x2, Binding+Magic if the spirit is bound already) with drain equal to its Force. Now you bind it to your service with Binding+Magic vs. Force x2. This spirit will accomplish either a number of tasks equal to your magic so long as no individual task takes more days that your ranks in Binding to accomplish, will serve you for 1 day per point of binding (unlimited services in that time period), or can be bound to one specific task for Binding+Magic months. You can also permanently bind the spirit to a task for its Force in karma or to your general service for 1 point of your magic (permanently lost). If you choose general service then you need to make a Binding+Magic vs. Force x2 test for every year that the spirit is bound but you can reduce the spirits dice pool by 1 point for every point of karma you spend.

The benefit of already existing spirits is that you can bind spirits of greater force than your magic if you have a physical copy of their spirit formula and thus don't need to materialize one from its True Name, although you do still have to summon the spirit. If you have a properly prepared physical spirit formula then the opposed tests to summon and bind the spirit are only its Force (not Force x 2).

The benefit of these Spirit rules is that you are a lot less likely to run into metric shit tons of spirits and you (as the GM) have a fair bit more control over the specifics. If the player wants to summon a specific spirit, well then maybe Ghostwalker already has it called up, and if he wants to create his own then he faces limitations on force.

In the long-term this doesn't make Spirit conjuration really any weaker but it makes any spirit army shenanigans generally something that would take a whole campaign worth of time and effort to accomplish.

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So what is the end result of all of these changes? Riggers, Deckers, and Street Sams no longer run into the karma ceiling and can keep up with the Awakened for at least a while longer while preserving everyone's niche and feel. It's a lot harder for a Rigger or Decker to pick up the others roll as an after thought. No more Adept AR hacking being better than hotsim VR hacking and no more runaway Agent Smith. A Matrix who's fundamental architecture and existence doesn't make you tear your hair out at it's insanity. Rules are streamlined so that things generally have fewer specific exceptions and caveats. Some of the setting fluff is cleaned up. The feel of the game is preserved.

Oh yeah, and one other thing that I almost forgot. Seriously fix the pricing issues and pay scales. Mega's are double digit trillion nuyen (or more) corporations and the Sixth World has an economy that is easily into the several hundred trillions per year, asteroid mining and full scale space exploitation are things. Yes, to the average wage slave a few million nuyen means a life of luxury. The average wageslave is also not burning through money like water as he tries to survive outside the sight of the megacorporations while simultaneously doing their dirty work. This doesn't mean that you can't play a street game or the like but what it does mean is that in your street game don't have any expectation that you will ever be running against any of the AAA's on anything but the most absolutely tertiary of levels and don't have any expectation that you will ever even come within shouting distance of the top tier ware - it also means that Awakened characters would be very well advised that powerful mage's are rare and that they have no where near the resources to escape the site of the megacorporations so if they start getting too powerful and throwing down the higher end magics then they will end up the target of extraction runs. And the opposition on those runs will be the people loaded down with the billions of nuyen worth of cyberware and a few thousand or so high force spirits.

You can play street and you can play Delta force and the rules can handle both but do not, ever, feed the delusion that the street team can play in the delta force sandbox. A lot of the issues people have with the game come from trying to do both in the same game with the same characters. It needs to be made clear in the rule books that while the setting as a whole supports both extremes and that you can play either (or anywhere in between) under the rules, you don't get to do both extremes at the same time.

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Now onto the business side of things. Make an official SR6 website where you can make an account and buy the books as PDF's, build your own character generation tool that automatically includes all of the options from whatever books you own. Make available your own database of character sheets for unimportant NPC's so that if someone wants a corp guard then they can just print one out/bring one up. Make your own mapping tool so that you can easily draw up maps for buildings, it doesn't need to be anything super fancy but just a relatively simple means to draw things up - and allow people to upload their own maps and floor plans to your database for others to use.

The biggest weakness in the RPG space right now is that no one has embraced the computer age in an easy and effective manner. If I, as a GM, want to throw together a bar complete with NPC's then I should be able to do that in a few clicks (bar floor plan, grab a few dozen NPC character sheets). I should be able to buy a program that lets me make crude 3d models using your rules easily and then share it with my players. Build a good, solid, online experience with intergrated VOIP, character generation, environment generation, and rules implementation and you will make a fortune both by selling the books in the first place and (more importantly) from the continuing monthly fee that you can charge. Do that and SR6 will become the first truly successful RPG of the internet age, don't and your customer base will continue to shrink as no one can find games and kids don't even know you exist.

Game balance issues have been long discussed - but I'm not sure that the holy altar of game balance is the right place to worship anyhow. And besides that, there are qualitative differences between an up-armoured samutankurai and a very squishy magihamster in a lined coat.



Preach it, brother!



I don't see how this is different from point 1. And, again, game balance ... not all it's cracked up to be.



It's not quite that simple. Canonically it was a mass ritual on a scale that would have no plausible chance of being replicated, with many of the participants (if I remember correctly) dying in the process, making it more akin to mass blood magic. Arguably, this is magic on a scale that dragons would have a hard time harnessing as individuals anyway. To equate that with something that a player character could pull off is like saying that all hacker/deckers are just a few karma away from writing the next Great Crash worm. Without a munchkin GM, it's just not a plausible in-game prospect. To say that magic is beyond the scale of human power - well, so is plate tectonics. Oh noes, teh fizziks is broke! --- said no sane player, ever. Not on those grounds, anyhow.



No, this does not follow. "Magic can reach COSMIC POWER!!!" does not mean that Max the Magician has any reasonable in-game hope of getting city-leveling power. In fact, it's more plausible that a team of top-flight samurai would be able to collect the goods to build a nuclear device, or outright abscond with one. Advantage: non-awakened power. Please go back and revisit your argument, and refine it to a better point.

(Snipping the bit about the Matrix, because we're in total agreement there.)

(Snipping the bit about magic being able to accelerate metals. It's mostly irrelevant, except as an illustration of the idea that many problems can be solved in multiple, parallel ways. Well, yeah. We know.)



It all depends on your frame of analysis. Another way of putting it is that your samutankurai is as awesomesauce as the best drek he can steal, as of game session 1, whereas your magician simply has no fast route to power. Also, the samutankurai can be cybernetically tooled up to incorporate damn near any tool use facility you can imagine, while the magician is stuck with what his body + initiation can handle (and initiations have strongly diminishing rates of return, and vast costs). Beyond that, magicians need infrastructure including lodges, circles (with all the politics that entails), orichalcum and all the other goodies. The mere fact that Max the Magician has a library in his head doesn't mean that much once he's dancing with the devil every time he tries to cast a spell that stretches his abilities.

Granted, a revisitation of alchemy to allow for stored magical powers that are accessible to non-magicians in the same way that a samutankurai can run a program that he could never have written, may redress some imbalances, but you could argue that your samutankurai becomes even more powerful as of Session 1, with no real incremental benefit to the magician. Is that really the intended result? I doubt it, somehow.

... and of course, this all assumes that we give a good goddamn about game balance. I don't. Not sure how much other people do.




Snip bit about reshaping technomancers to mages. First off, that violates the idea that magic and technology are separated by some fairly bright lines, which is one of the most important limitations on magic in the first place. This isn't going to improve your game balance situation at all. I have a better solution: no technomancers. None. Not now. Not ever. Never. Done! (See, that was easy!)

Snip bit about Envoy. Solves nothing I can see, introduces new complications for their own sake, and again complicates the whole game balance discussion that you apparently care about by introducing artificial barriers. If one magician can notionally do all the magic, why couldn't one technician notionally do all the technology? Again, I'm fresh out of caring on that front, but your proposed solution exacerbates your proposed gripes.

Snip bits about Matrix infrastructure. Don't really change much other than some fairly sane observations about different solutions to different problems that could just be written up in fluff.

Snip bits about hacking processes - not at all clear how that fixes much of anything.

Snip bits about nanoware and parallel meat and matrix operations - Still don't see how this fixes anything in in-game terms, because best case it still means that instead of everybody heading off for a pizza while the matrix run happens, you have everybody stopping to smell the flowers for five minutes out of every twenty while matrix issues get resolved.

Snip the bit about more powerful cyberjunk - what's wrong with just having a cyberzombie ruleset and allowing samutankurais to be cybernetic t-birds, should they want to? At any rate, your wishlist (Envoy aside) is mostly an Arsenal update away.

Snip bits about rearranging adepts. Doesn't seem to be earth-shaking.

Snip bits about rearranging the math on sorcery. Seems to be more Karma-sinky than ever for no real gain except more mental arithmetic.

Snip bits about transitory spirits. Largely seems to amount to super-watchers.

Snip bits about field use spirits. The waffle about a True Name seems to mostly amount to a cost of getting the spirit's Yu-Gi-Oh card. Other than that it's just a spirit. Moving on...

Snip bits about creating permanents spirits in exchange for permanent magic loss. What the hell is the point of this? Super-watchers in exchange for magic. Great, I can get six of them ... then I'm not a magician any more. Welp, that was fun ...

Snip bits about binding extant spirits for limited durations, in exchange for permanent magic loss. Great, I can bind six of them .... then in a year, I'm not a magician any more, nor do I have any spirits because I can't keep the binding rolls up any more. Welp, that was fun ...



The downside to your proposals is that they introduce complications without clear benefits, solve problems that we don't really seem to have, and introduce problems we don't need. They'd be a strong argument for just making magicians NPCs in a mutant game of Cyberpunk.



I don't see niche as being any more valuable than game balance. It's a misleading way of interpreting the idea that every character should have some value to the team. And several of your proposals complicate rules, rather than streamline them (and you didn't really offer a new set of metaphysics to render magic any more coherent).

Snipping bits about pricing scales ... yeah, the economics is screwed up, and they should actually hire an economist and a sociologist to actually piece together how such a world could or would work. We're in agreement on that front, as far as I can tell.

Snip bit about the PDF offering and business interface. You're not wrong, but I'm not sure that's a problem that needs a near-term solution.

Snip bit about electronic gaming aids. They do exist, arguably they could be improved, I'm all good with that, but it shouldn't happen at the expense of being easily able to run this with paper and pencil.

In summary, I broadly agree with some of your diagnoses, but I don't think that your proposals are all very well-directed at the problems you identified.

The game needs to be at least largely balanced. Balance should not trump all, or even be the first consideration, but it always needs to be considered.

And besides that, there are qualitative differences between an up-armoured samutankurai and a very squishy magihamster in a lined coat.
No, there really aren't (at least in the theoretical sense). Go look at the SR4 write up for Lugh Surehand in Street Legends, he has used quickened spells to amp a number of abilities as far as (or further) than cyber can reach and has another 100 karma that he could dump into more quickened spells. I can, at least under SR4 rules, give you a "squishy magihamster" who will straight up rip through a hoard of cyberzombies with his bare hands (and without casting any spells).

One of the most persistent, consistent, and reasonable complaints about the SR system is how it lets a mage who knows what they are doing far exceed pretty much anyone else in pretty much any field. This needs to be resolved and that means you need to separate the mage from being able to do some of the other niches and allow other characters to (at least theoretically) have indefinite and infinite advancement.

I don't see how this is different from point 1. And, again, game balance ... not all it's cracked up to be.
This isn't about game balance. It's about hackers being replaced by comlinks and agents. It's about riggers being able to get drones only so good. It's especially about the street same not being *able* to become a living tank who can wade through a hail of gunfire and not notice, or punch straight through a blast door, or run down a car going two hundred kph, or jump off the roof of a hundred story skyscraper only to crater the ground and walk away.

A high end street sam at the limits of available cyber should be a 40K space marine (or even better). He should be a guy who can shred a MET2000 battalion if played even a little smart and they don't have equally enhanced individuals on the field. Even if you totally removed magic from the game, physical world SR characters are still royally shafted and can't even begin to approach what should be fully possible with the tech level of 2070+.

It's not quite that simple. Canonically it was a mass ritual on a scale that would have no plausible chance of being replicated, with many of the participants (if I remember correctly) dying in the process, making it more akin to mass blood magic.
It's a bunch of naked, untrained, yokels pulling out power that exceeds the total US nuclear arsenal. Sure they died, but they still commanded that power. That is what magic allows, and it is simply something that tech is never going to be able to replicate (at least not at a tech level anywhere near as low as SR's).

Arguably, this is magic on a scale that dragons would have a hard time harnessing as individuals anyway.
"Hard time harnessing as individuals". That this is even an argument already proves my point. If someone like Lofwyr can arguably do it now, what do you think he will be able to do a few thousand years from now at the end of the 6th age?

We have an immortal elf initiated into the high double digits canonically saying that he might have been able to successfully off Big D. The rules should allow for one to theoretically, at least, reach this kind of power level.

To equate that with something that a player character could pull off is like saying that all hacker/deckers are just a few karma away from writing the next Great Crash worm. Without a munchkin GM, it's just not a plausible in-game prospect. To say that magic is beyond the scale of human power - well, so is plate tectonics. Oh noes, teh fizziks is broke! --- said no sane player, ever. Not on those grounds, anyhow.
If something is possible in a setting as anything but a one off special circumstance then the rules should allow it. We have numerous canonical examples of people who started as normal metahumans being able to reach these levels of power. This isn't some one off unique event and so they rules should allow it. Even if for all practical purposes it is impossible. It might take you ten thousand karma to reach the level in question and that is perfectly fine, this level of power shouldn't be something that a PC should ever have any serious expectation or hope of reaching - but it still should be at least technically possible in a good rules system.

Actually Crash 3.0 really isn't beyond the abilities of a fairly low karma hacker who gets a bit lucky and is really willing to put in the time and effort, at least in SR4. It's insanely unlikely but you could hack enough of the infrastructure in the right ways to pretty much bring down the Matrix (or at least pretty close to it).

No, this does not follow. "Magic can reach COSMIC POWER!!!" does not mean that Max the Magician has any reasonable in-game hope of getting city-leveling power. In fact, it's more plausible that a team of top-flight samurai would be able to collect the goods to build a nuclear device, or outright abscond with one. Advantage: non-awakened power. Please go back and revisit your argument, and refine it to a better point.
The top-flight samurai can only steal those pieces for a nuclear device because of all of the infrastructure that people have already built and has gone into all of those parts. And even then, nukes in SR are pretty chump level given that someone keeps using magic to fuck over their yields royally. The Street Sam's power is all about the tools he can get and the abilities of those tools are beyond his ability to influence; he can not go an demand new cyberware with some previous unknown capability and have it in a few months, at best he is looking at years of dedicated work by legions of scientists with more funding than god. A buck naked mage can, within a few months, have created a spell that does whatever thing he wanted and cast it; all without any reliance or influence on others.

The power of a mage in SR is limitless, the power of a non awakened character is incredibly limited unless they can get legions of others to bend to their will.

It all depends on your frame of analysis. Another way of putting it is that your samutankurai is as awesomesauce as the best drek he can steal, as of game session 1, whereas your magician simply has no fast route to power. Also, the samutankurai can be cybernetically tooled up to incorporate damn near any tool use facility you can imagine, while the magician is stuck with what his body + initiation can handle (and initiations have strongly diminishing rates of return, and vast costs). Beyond that, magicians need infrastructure including lodges, circles (with all the politics that entails), orichalcum and all the other goodies. The mere fact that Max the Magician has a library in his head doesn't mean that much once he's dancing with the devil every time he tries to cast a spell that stretches his abilities.
The best damn street sam that it is possible to build in SR 4 even with limitless karma would loose in a straight physical fight (no spells cast) to a single initiation mage that I could whip up. The issue isn't that the mage is too powerful in this situation (although it probably is) but that the street sam is too weak.

You should not be able to make the best damn street sam that the rules allow for a few million nuyen. And using all delta grade cyber and bio to make the absolute best theoretically capable street sam in SR4 costs less than 10 million nuyen. The issue also isn't that the prices on the ware in question are too low, it is that the limits on what ware is capable of are set far too low. Throw cyberware that costs a hundred million (or even a couple billion) nuyen to acquire into the game. Where are the adamanitum bones (of wolverine fame)? Screw titanium, give me the exotic metals that cost a few million nuyen per gram to manufacture. Where is the bioware that lets you spit hydrocloric acid and crap high explosives (technically you can actually manage that one)? Where are the synthetic muscles that let you jump a hundred meters straight up (we technically have the ability to create those today, even if we can't implant them)? Where is bullet time, when your brain is processing data so fast that you see the world as a series of still pictures because your puny flesh and blood eyes simply can provide data fast enough? Where is becoming a T2 with your whole body a cloud of nanites?

Granted, a revisitation of alchemy to allow for stored magical powers that are accessible to non-magicians in the same way that a samutankurai can run a program that he could never have written, may redress some imbalances, but you could argue that your samutankurai becomes even more powerful as of Session 1, with no real incremental benefit to the magician. Is that really the intended result? I doubt it, somehow.
You can already (SR4 at least) give non-magicals stored magical power. It's actually not that hard. Sometimes it really is like no one has bothered to figure out what an ally spirit with a flesh form inhabitation can actually really do

... and of course, this all assumes that we give a good goddamn about game balance. I don't. Not sure how much other people do.
I care less about balance than I do the setting making sense, but even then balance should still be considered. The current (incredibly low) limitations on what augmentation can do and total lack of actually expensive augmentations is almost criminally negligent from a setting perspective.

Snip bit about reshaping technomancers to mages. First off, that violates the idea that magic and technology are separated by some fairly bright lines, which is one of the most important limitations on magic in the first place. This isn't going to improve your game balance situation at all. I have a better solution: no technomancers. None. Not now. Not ever. Never. Done! (See, that was easy!)
Magic and technology aren't separated by fairly bright lines and technomancers are flat out magic - they do not work by physics. Technomancers make far more since as a third type of Awakened who have come about in response to the change in the world - it is simply magic adapting to the world around it and sentient beliefs. Mage's are magic focused on the physical and spirit worlds. Adepts are magic focused on the individual. Technomancers are magic focused on advanced technology and a different part of the spirit world. It fits virtually perfectly with pretty much everything we see in the game and means you don't need to add in an entirely new kind of fundamentally different magic.

Snip bit about Envoy. Solves nothing I can see, introduces new complications for their own sake, and again complicates the whole game balance discussion that you apparently care about by introducing artificial barriers. If one magician can notionally do all the magic, why couldn't one technician notionally do all the technology? Again, I'm fresh out of caring on that front, but your proposed solution exacerbates your proposed gripes.
One tech could notional do all tech. Nothing is stopping someone from being a full on cybered to the gills street sam with beyond Fastjack level hacking and extreme high end rigging (well except the absurd karma investment). And yes this exists as a somewhat artificial barrier, you need an explanation for why deckers and riggers are different (currently there isn't one) if you want to preserve both character archtypes.

So the Rigger got broken off into the guy who's mind is mentally flexible enough to be at ease in wildly different physical bodies. The high end "Rigger" is someone who can grab a wage slave, slap a specialized comlink and trodes on the saps head, and then jump into that guys body and walk out the door with his real body comatose on the floor. He is the guy who can jump into, say, a dozen drones at once and simultaneously control them all as one mind with many bodies. This is the Rigger archtype stripped of hard limits and given karma.

Snip bits about Matrix infrastructure. Don't really change much other than some fairly sane observations about different solutions to different problems that could just be written up in fluff.
Yes that should be in fluff but it is also critically rules important for how the architecture of a hack changes.

Snip bits about hacking processes - not at all clear how that fixes much of anything.
A hacker can do his legwork and create portable hackers in a box for his team to take with them, or he can go on the run and hack on the fly in VR while his team takes the risk of being totally fucked if he gets taken out. Do your legwork and your street sams com is automatically hacking the tac-nets of the facilities guards, your face is automatically being edited out of the video feeds from the wireless cameras, your mage is encrypting doors as you pass them so that no one can open them. And you are carrying a gun while being ready to jump in if an enemy decker should appear or something unexpected occurs.

Snip bits about nanoware and parallel meat and matrix operations - Still don't see how this fixes anything in in-game terms, because best case it still means that instead of everybody heading off for a pizza while the matrix run happens, you have everybody stopping to smell the flowers for five minutes out of every twenty while matrix issues get resolved.
No, the hacker basically just takes two turns (one meat, one matrix). The increased dice pools of VR hacking under my system means that hacking on the fly will be fairly fast unless specifically opposed by a VRed opposition hacker - in which case it's a quick 1v1 fight that will resolve either way within a round or two

Snip the bit about more powerful cyberjunk - what's wrong with just having a cyberzombie ruleset and allowing samutankurais to be cybernetic t-birds, should they want to?
Because Cyberzombies are too weak and way too limited in capabilities? And you can already become a cybernetic t-bird.

At any rate, your wishlist (Envoy aside) is mostly an Arsenal update away.
No, it is a pretty fundamental change in the limits on what augmentations can do. It's pushing the power you can buy for nuyen way up.

Snip bits about rearranging adepts. Doesn't seem to be earth-shaking.
It isn't supposed to be, Adepts are actually about right game wise.

Snip bits about rearranging the math on sorcery. Seems to be more Karma-sinky than ever for no real gain except more mental arithmetic.
It is supposed to be more karma-sinky, the intent is to somewhat close the gap between Mages and non mages, and in play the math is actually easier. DV for spells is always (Force of spell x 2), Drain Resistance is always (Willpower+Mental Attribute) vs. Force of spell with each net hit reducing DV by 1. After the Drain Resist roll you lop off a point of Drain for each rank you have in that spell's skill. Whatever is left you take as boxes of physical or stun damage (allocated however you choose between the two tracks). One opposed roll who's numbers are very easy to remember off the top of your head and simple subtraction.

Snip bits about transitory spirits. Largely seems to amount to super-watchers.
Sure, until you do things like give the spirit Innate Spell (Fireball) or Endow+Regeneration and have it heal up your buddy.

Snip bits about field use spirits. The waffle about a True Name seems to mostly amount to a cost of getting the spirit's Yu-Gi-Oh card. Other than that it's just a spirit. Moving on...
Well yes, it's kinda what it is supposed to be.

Snip bits about creating permanents spirits in exchange for permanent magic loss. What the hell is the point of this? Super-watchers in exchange for magic. Great, I can get six of them ... then I'm not a magician any more. Welp, that was fun ...
You can regain it for karma. Max magic is still 6+Initiation grade, so you spend some karma and regain the point of Magic that you lost. And again not super watchers.

Snip bits about binding extant spirits for limited durations, in exchange for permanent magic loss. Great, I can bind six of them .... then in a year, I'm not a magician any more, nor do I have any spirits because I can't keep the binding rolls up any more. Welp, that was fun ...
See above.

Emperor Tippy, my problem with a "magihamster" quicking a lot spells and then "ripping through a hoard of cyberzombies with his bare hands", is that you're forgetting that cyberzombies have the Astral Hazing flaw equal to the absolute value of their Essence value. More than one cyberzombie would have a cumulative effect. by the time you reach 3 or 4, the background count would be enough that even a dragon (not Big D or other named dragons) would be mighty uncomfortable.

Honestly, I thought the best way to limit mages was to limit the number of times that you could initiate to your Essence value, but other people have convinced me that the Karma cost would be what's limiting you. Remember, yes, you have the ability to go as high as you want, but every time you initiate, you DO NOT get another point of Magic. You have to raise that separately.

Another problem with the Emperor Tippy theory, now that I read everything again, with care, is that it casually assumes vast buckets of karma. I have never, ever played or run a game of any substantial duration where there wasn't a magician complaining about how much karma everything cost, and how it would take them years to learn to do much beyond what they started with. Player character magicians quite simply don't have enough karma to get crazy unless the game runs for years in real life time.

Of course, if you have a ten year running campaign in which your magicians start to resemble Lugh Surehands, I guess you have a point? Maybe? Or if you're Monty Haul generous, then sure, whatever. But it's never happened in my games. It's a theoretical concern, not a practical one.

In fact, let's do the math. How much would it cost to buy the relevant spells and quickening them and getting the right initiation level and so on, to the point that a magician is a match in strength, speed, durability and so on for a fairly well-specced street samurai?

That's the reason my combat medic mage (SR4) had two points worth cyber/bioware. I took automatics and heavy weapons to be able to use a Ares Alpha or a MGL-6 pretty decently. With a synaptic booster I was moving pretty decently as well.

His combat spell roster was Stun Bolt and Stun Ball. That's it. The rest of his spells were things that couldn't be replicated with tech or were more efficient with magic such as Heal, Cure Disease, and Fashion. Honestly, with Fashion and Makeover, a mage can work with a Face to make themselves at home in ANY situation, and doesn't require tanker trucks worth of Karma.

Where do you get the idea that background counts stack? A cyberzombie produces a background count of 4 - not +4 or -4 but 4. Whether you have one or one thousand cyberzombies crammed in specific area the effect is a background count of 4. That reduces the force of quickened spells by 4.


Your "initiate up to essence" rule breaks point 1 on my list; it makes the rules and the setting not function together because it means you can't have any of the truly spectacular characters.

And yes, I am fully aware.


Then your players are being bitchy or your GM's are being stingy. Every time you go on a run you get a point of karma for surviving it, every time you achieve the runs objective you get another point, not being an idiot gets you another point, pushing the story/taking initiative gets you another point.

So let's look at a fairly basic run. Mr. Johnson want's you to deliver Mr. Pops (UCAS SIN 3432-5432-4350-3242) to him.
Run #1: Find out where Mr. Pops is and build a dossier on him. That is two points of karma assuming you manage it (hacker does some matrix digging, mage gets an astral look at him and drops a watcher spirit or two, face starts getting a little cozy with his acquaintances, street sam scopes out physical security. Since everyone is playing smart you are looking at another point. Now if they dig into the Johnson a bit to figure out that he is really the best friend of Mr. Pops ex wife's brother well then that is another point. So right there is 4 karma for everyone with a run that would take all of twenty minutes or so of play time (if that).

Run #2: Now that you know the information you need to create a scenario to grab Mr. Pops. So the Hacker and Face work together to set up a couple dummy companies (one that would have legitimate business with Mr. Pops and a bodyguard service) while the Rigger and Sam go and jack an appropriate car/ set up the physical parts of the deception and grab while the Mage does something. This is another 3 karma for everyone (and perhaps 4). Again it takes 20 minutes or so of table time to play.

Run #3: Everything is set up so you make the grab. The Rigger is handling the car while the street sam acts as body guard and Mr. Pops is driven to the Johnson. The hacker is erasing the data trail for the whole run while the mage is preventing anyone from tracking Mr. Pops with magic. Another 3-4 karma.

Run #4: Turns out that Mr. Johnson is a infiltration and combat specialist adept with a few bound spirits on hand and that he is supposed to kill the team and Mr. Pops. Objectives are to escape without any of the team dying, keep Mr. Pops alive, and figure out what the real story is. Manage any two and you are looking at two points of karma for every runner that survived, probably with another point or two depending on how things go and what the players do. Digging turns up that the Adept was a known Renraku deniable asset and that Mr. Pops stands to inherit a controlling interest in some corp Renraku wants if Pop's uncle kicks the bucket (and he is on his last legs receiving medical care) but (like his Uncle) he is unlikely to agree and if he is removed then the next individual in line to inherit does and she (a cousin) has strong Renraku connections.

Run #5: Figure out how to get Mr. Pops out from under Renraku's gun, preferably without Renraku getting the corp. The hacker and face get to work on the investigation end while the rest of the team works to keep Mr. Pops hidden and alive. The digging turns up that the cousin is actually pushing all of this and that it is not really Renraku as a whole that wants to acquire the corp but the piddling little subsidiary of a subsidiary of Renraku that is controlled by the cousins current boyfriend. And it seems that Mr. Boyfriend is being mighty free with Renraku deniable assets and has been materially misrepresenting the matter to the adept. If the players captured the adept or he got away then providing him the info will get him to drop the matter as he goes and acquaints Mr. Boyfriend and cousin with the fact that Renraku does not appreciate people using corporate assets for their own ends without authorization - indeed it has a fatal dislike for the practice. If the players managed to kill the adept but have any good Renraku connections then they can ensure that corporate learns what was going on and things get taken care of. In either case the run is over as is this story line and the players get another 4-6 karma. Dead adept and no Renraku connections means that the players need to find some way to remove the cousin and boyfriend from play while also getting the blame for the dead Renraku assets pushed off onto someone else, which means another run or two.

So there, a nice little nights worth of play. It had five separate runs in it that each should have generated karma, and assuming that the players resolved everything nicely then they should have cleared around 20 karma for the night.

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And if you are trying to get to top tier power levels in anything like a short time scale (i.e. not decades or longer worth of game time) then you aren't worrying about gaining karma from runs or the GM's awards. You are doing things like ripping it out of the now cooling corpses of your enemies (or random passers by).

Emperor Tippy... what you describe above as 5 runs we describe as 1 run...
So, no, not 20 Karma, but 4.
One nights worth of play, and a single Mission completed (Return Mr. Pops to the Johnson, survive the double cross and turn the tables)...

+1

Correct. A run isn't over until the team has actually (tried to) do what the Johnson asked. If you're getting 20 karma per session, that's way out of line of what is written in the rules, and I could see how in a year's calendar time, you could accumulate 1000 karma. But that's not the way the rules work.

In fact, really complex runs can take multiple sessions. A year's dedicated play would be more likely to garner maybe 150 karma.

What you're describing is what I dismissed as a Monty Haul scenario.

I will at least back Emperor Tippy on one point - we house-ruled that Technomancers were Awakened ages ago. Some people may be squealing like stuck pigs over that, but it just wasn't a big deal to us. Their abilities clearly don't operate according to mundane physics, ergo, they are magical. Done deal, moving on...

Except their abilities work in space. Just to repeat JanessaVR, a technomancer's abilities. WORK. IN. SPACE! They are also not affected by background counts

@Emperor Tippy, PC mages should be limited! NPC are powered by plot and therefore can do whatever the frag the GM wants them to do.

Huh, actually didn't think about that, as we've never been into space. But no worries, I'll make notes in our house rules document to remember that TM abilities don't work outside the manasphere and are affected by BGC, just like other Awakened.

Technomancers can also do things that are supposedly outside the canonical reach of magic - one of the strongest limitations on magic is its interactions with high tech beyond the Smash/Fry/TurntoGoo level. (I miss that spell ...)

I just write technomancers out of existence. Clean, simple, a lot more consistent.

That might be the easiest way to deal with them, but if you got rid of some of the dumber overpowered things you could do with TM in 4th edition, then they're just hackers who didn't need to code software.

Some kind of hard limit on Magic would still be good, either that or find a way to uncap mundane advancement (SR5 screwed over sammies way too much). While it might not even matter to the average game, it would at least bring things like great dragons and immortal elves back to the same scale as the rest of the game world. I'm not saying such beings shouldn't be at the top of the power scale, but they should still be at least potentially vulnerable to things like an orbital strike, or a nuke, or an elite hit team. They should survive by a mix of personal badassery, lots of minions on call, and contingency plans for nearly everything - NOT be being nuke-non-selling, fighter-jet-outfighting, you-can't-even-touch-me-because-my-armor-is-too-high Gary Stu special snowflake masturbatory author self-insertion fantasies.

I think it'd be more interesting if high initiations of magic comes with negative qualities, like how cyberzombies get them. Basically unlimitless powers comes with the downside of mental health. Tapping into forces beyond mortal comprehension should come with some drawbacks. It also can add more interesting risk reward as you'll never be sure if that magical researcher is also a mad scientist. It could easily explain why shamans go toxic or buggy, or why mages turn to blood magic. It also add a bit of Lovecraftian horror to magic, discounting the actual horrors.

People really get way too much power from magic, and having some interesting role playing downsides would be really awesome and thematic.

The problem isn't that people get way too much power from magic, its that they get way too little power from tech.

You can, fully rules legally, get yourself a permanent admin account on Lonestars Seattle network (or KE later). Want to run a background check or find an address? Then its basically a six second datasearch.

Properly used hacking is going slowly and steadily building up an entire stable of legitimate accounts and tools across all of that matrix connected infrastructure. So that you can do things like shut down that fleeing card with literally just a command. Do this right and its pretty much every bit as powerful as magic (at least in game terms) but GM's hate you for it and since the rules are a little less clearly written they nerf it while not nerfing magic.

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Then you have 'ware and drones. The best 'ware in the game is still pretty shitty and is far worse than what should be available at the SR tech level, and drones are the same way. They also made a mistake with making dual natured so rare. You can use orichalum to make dual natured light per fluff, so where are the dual natured laser weapons? Have someone discover the alchemical process for making cerrukite so that Hepatizon can be reasonably priced and now you can buy dual natured armor, swords, and even bullets.

The problem isn't that a Great Dragon can tank thor shots, it's that Sammy Sam the Street Sam has no way to harm that spirit Joe Wagemage called up. It's that no corp (aside from the AA's or better on special facilities) has any defense against a Mage creating an ally spirit with Endowment and Astral Form as powers and then just having the entire runner team walk right through its walls (Mist Form is also fun for this, as is Immunity to Normal Weapons).

The problem is that GM's are locating AAA tech R&D facilities on Earth when fluff has most of their real top tier R&D being done in orbit (and even well into deep space). Want to steal the plans for the new SK refinery nanites? Well then you are doing a run way out in the asteroid belt where magic sure as hell isn't functioning at all.

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The biggest reason for balance issues with Magic is that many GM's insist on treating the runners like they are low end gangbangers in terms of resources and nuyen. That's fine but Awakened characters really don't need much nuyen to gain in power (and then can use that power to gain nuyen) while the rigger who wants an Eagle-C needs to get 10 million nuyen (well more once you throw on all of the upgrades you really want to make) together for that purchase (and most of you would be screaming your lungs out if someone even suggested that players with that much cash is a reasonable thing).

You can make SR4 balance alright if GM's stop being penny pinching tightwads who insist their PC's must never be more than a day away from cup ramen and actually pay them commiserate with their skills. At least up until you start reaching magic 10 or so and/or the mages start breaking out the really nasty tricks.

I partly agree, the game doesnt take a stand on whether runners are street scum barely scrapping by or superhumans that could just go legit but dont because.....frag the system. That said you seem under the incorrect impression that karma rewards are somehow higher than nuyen rewards when in truth meaningful character advancement is a lie in Shadowrun be that money or karma, it just exist for those kind of people that play the same campaign for years.

In your example for 4th edition. For a mage to initiate (lets assume a magic 6) and raise his magic would cost him 13 or 10 [10 + initiation grade * 3) karma plus another 35 karma. Thats 45-48 karma points by 5 karma per run thats gonna take you 9 runs. Which is 9-10 weeks assuming a weekly game in which the runs ended the same week. And all of that assuming you dont spend karma in anything else and what you gain in a +1 in your magic related dicepools and 1 metamagic.

Lets say you save those 9 sessions and want to initiate again. Nows is gonna cost you 13 or 16 karma + 40 karma. Which now is another 10 to 11 weeks of gaming. And all you have to show for is a +2 in your magic related dicepools and 2 metamagics. There are 52 weeks in a year and you spend 20+ of those in raising only 1 attribute twice and learning 2 neat tricks.

Yeah, runner pay is ridiculously low considering how much it costs for a tech-oriented character to upgrade. Hell, even what they start out with is too costly compared to what they get paid. It should be - your deck got trashed last run? Null sweat. Just get a better one with what we got paid for the run. It actually is - crap, your 300K deck got trashed doing a 10K run. Guess you have to be hopelessly crippled as you struggle through the next 30 runs to get back to where you started out with, gear-wise.

Even beyond gear, runners should be spending money on new faces and identities, use-and-lose vehicles and weapons, bribes, and gear for specific jobs (diving equipment, desert gear, etc.). Shadowrunning should be an expensive proposition, but should pay even better. I get the low-life noir theme that some people prefer - it's just that those kind of games make it damn hard to balance mundanes and awakened characters, since SR make mundanes seriously gear-dependent.