...my concern is what will occur for Missions play (which where I live is my only involvement with SR)? With the 5E rules, we currently use the addiction/drug interaction rules as written.

So is there still the Addicted quality? Wouldn't make sense to include it without a mechanic that outlines the negative effects.

There is a Severity table as with other editions I believe. And a rule for penalties per each level of addiction on the table.

Just create an addiction test to your liking and Boom! You're Done.

"Just do the job the professional authors should have done yourself and boom."

i think the "" should only go around the word professional in that sentence by now.

Sigh. I just bought 6th and it's what expected, sadly. There are good concepts sandwiched between the horrible glaring issues, surely.

I actually like the edge system well enough on first glance, we'll see how she goes after I fully digest.

We'll be here once you try it in play and realize it is up there with shaped charges and vehicle collisions on the list of poorly thought out SR rules.

I was hoping for Hosts rules to explained in more detail in the Core rules.
We will have to wait for that in the Supplement along with Agents and, Um.....Programming Specialization.

i'm not convinced that new edge is inherently bad as a mechanic. i personally don't like it even a tiny bit, and i think the execution was terrible, and it really bugs me that essentially everyone in the universe has an edge power that in the lore has essentially been reserved for great dragons and powerful free spirits and the like.

but i mean, there are games out there that use a conceptually similar mechanic that do it well, so it isn't that the mechanic is bad... it's just that the shadowrun dev team have their heads so far up their own asses that they can't hear what their playtesters and errata team are telling them. or possibly they just have their heads up their own asses and simply don't care what the playtesters and errata team are telling them. it's hard to tell.

What playtesters?

oh, they *have* playtesters. mostly they're people who wrote the rules and their groups, so you can bet it's a whole lot of everyone agreeing that the stuff they wrote is top notch, and in addition to not having proper playtesters i doubt they have enough of them, but they do have them.

you just can't tell that they have playtesters or proofreaders or errata teams because none of the management at CGL seems to give a rat's ass about what their (unpaid volunteer) proofreaders and playtesters and errata team say.

it seems CGL would rather vomit out more garbage than take the time to do a decent job of... well, most things, really. editing, promoting their product, interacting with their fans, keeping an eye on their finances... honestly, now that i think about it, i'm not entirely sure what it is that the management on the shadowrun side of CGL actually do.

So far as I can tell, the management side of SR for CGL consists of Jason Hardy.

Who is also the line dev and primary writer for the CRB.

considering the quality of work CGL's shadowrun side is turning out, if you were on that team would *you* want to be public-facing? i mean, you might keep working there because paying jobs in the RPG industry aren't exactly everywhere, but... would you want to be stuck talking to fans of the setting who have watched production quality go down the toilet?

the head of the division doesn't have the guts to do it. why should anyone else volunteer to go into the firing line for their work if the line developer is setting an example of "pretend that everything we're doing is great and ignore all the bad feedback".

To quote a post on the CGL forums, here's Hardy's take:

As asked on facebook by a user on the official forums

I asked him on his Facebook page why he or members of his team don't come out more to defend the game. This was his response....

——-

The main reasons I don't speak out are:

1) Internet kerfluffles are not always as large as they seem. Each internet channel--Reddit, forums, Facebook, Twitter--have their own constituencies, and none of them, as far as I have been able to tell, represent the player base at large. So it's not great for me to assume that because one channel, or many, have gone negative that I absolutely need to do something about it.

2) Even if I did do something about it, arguing about a creative work where people can form their own opinions rarely leads anywhere good. People are seldom talked into liking something they don't like, and arguments with the more vitriolic detractors don't go anywhere. The work, flawed as it might be, has to stand for itself. So we issued errata to make it as easy as possible for people to play the game. But directly engaging the critics tends to be time-consuming and mire people in a discussion that goes nowhere.

I have one book at the printers, another about to go on sale electronically, a third close to going to print, and another I need to try to get to print in just over a month. I trust players to decide for themselves whether they like them or not, and I have my hands full getting them out!


So as usual, denial is more than just a river in Egypt.

Well, not putting out shitty products might help, but hey, I guess they'll lobby for punitive measures against R. Talsorian RPGs now to protect their little monopoly. Or maybe they just call in a hit squad the police on Pondsmith. The products' shittyness, however, sure is no reason to rethink anything. They're the best rpoducts, amazing and very great, and that's true.

Personally, I could care less what they have to say to defend their shitty work. I would care if they committed to not be the people who put out ghastly shit like SR6, but I guess that's not going to happen with someone as unwilling and unable to reflect on his own mistakes as Hardy is.

Especially now that they're not (obviously) embezzling anymore. I'm guessing "nothing of value."

As per binarywraith's quote, they don't think some or many forums complaining about your rules being bad is worth looking into.

i'm curious if he thinks the errata job is done, actually, because he's saying here "So we issued errata to make it as easy as possible for people to play the game."

with no mention of further errata being on the way.

now i bring this up because the errata team are DEFINITELY not convinced the errata is done. they've made it clear that there's a second round of errata on the way, dealing with other errors and contradictions and such, which they've been working on for some time, and they're expecting CGL to release that, too.

so far as i'm concerned, the work is definitely standing for itself... but it's standing in an "i feel no interest in investing my money into that product" sort of area at this point.

why should i spend my money on their garbage when they can't even be bothered to take accountability for actually doing a good job. sure, there's some things that aren't necessarily wrong (much as i personally don't like what they've done with edge, it seems like some people love it like it's their firstborn child). but if the management's response to criticism is to essentially say that they don't care about quality, they're too busy pushing out quantity, then why should i want to spend my money on encouraging that behaviour.

Is it just me or does this sound like they only issued errata to make obnoxious consumers STFU?

Hardy sure is a stable genius all right.

Hardy's position that errata means admitting you made a mistake, and is therefore bad, is pretty well known.

Like all weak, spineless, craven bosses, Hardy can't own up on his mistakes, instead doubles down on them (SR6 is full of this, see the crainial bomb that is the new headware commlink) or offers half-baked, insufficient "errata" to appease people.

"We have made out product as playable as possible" is a great selling point for a game, btw.

He did say He was working hard on getting books printed, released.
That's alot of responsibility!
Who would give a damn about criticism with so much work to do.

Typically morose. A friend of mine works in publishing. At any given time he has four or more projects pending publication, and several more in various stages of pre-publication. It's a full-time job for a reason. And still, every screw-up is your fault and you have to stand up for it. It's how jobs work. If you had ever had one, you'd know.

Unless, of course, you work at CGL.

Just because someone's working hard doesn't mean that he's working well.
Not everyone is good with responsibility, as evidenced a LOT of times by now.
And to answer your rhetorical 'question': everyone who's interested in putting out a better product.

Now, all this being said: He's not completely wrong. You can't please everyone all the time and you need to decide which criticism you take to heart (often on the basis of how it's formulated).
HOWEVER - since at least late 4E, early 5E - it seems that CGL (and specifically Hardy) is surrounded by a self-congratulating echo chamber where everyone tells everyone else how good a job they did.

Unfortunately, self-made participation trophies do not mean that the product is great, or even good.

the fact that you can't please everyone doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do a good job, it means you should understand that even if you do a good job not everyone will be happy.

it seems particularly disingenuous to claim that since no one outlet represents the whole, that they should ignore all of them... when you consider that every outlet i've seen has some of the same problems. oh, not every member of every outlet has the same problems. even when it comes to the garbage editing, a few people actually seem to think everything is wonderful. but i can go to reddit and find people talking about the same subjects as i can find people talking on dumpshock or the official forums.

each individual location may not represent the whole, but when taken all together, the locations collectively will paint a pretty decent picture.

and the picture they paint is that while there are certainly some who are pleased with 6th edition, the same concerns keep coming up, and even amongst those that like the edition most of them are disappointed by the poor quality of editing.

so while i can understand to some extent hardy ignoring that a large portion of the fans think edge breaks verisimilitude badly, or that a pixie with a sledgehammer does the same damage as a troll with said sledgehammer, or that armour doesn't really *do* anything, there are, at the very least, nearly-universally-held opinions that the editing sucks, and if nothing else, at the very least *that* should be addressed.

but honestly, i'm not sure i'm going to get around to *ever* buying 6th edition any more. why should i? so far as the line developer is concerned, my opinion is a meaningless distraction that is getting in the way of spamming out ever more product.

Exactly. If it seems like I was disagreeing with that:
I merely meant that people tend to disregard criticism that's either not constructive ("I don't like the color blue, why is it in this book?") or expressed in a rude, disrespectful, or outright hostile & insulting manner ("Like all weak, spineless, craven [...]").
Neither subjective likes or dislikes nor ad hominem attacks will make a person reconsider their stance of having done a good job, and unfortunately, there's a lot of either, which makes it difficult on a limited time budget to even go look for constructive criticism that helps doing a better job. I know that I wouldn't go to that length, so I can at least relate to the reasons why Hardy doesn't think it's worth his time.

Doesn't make it easier to accept it, of course, nor does it make the product better. And I don't think at this point that it will recover to an acceptable standard.

i can see why that isn't enjoyable. but i consider it to be a key point that this is his job, not just a jobby.

like, sure i didn't *like* mopping up in a grocery store after someone spills oil or eggs on the floor. i've got other things i'm trying to get done, my boss isn't going to expect me to have less of them done because i had to take the time to clean up a particularly frustrating mess, and it's interrupting me in the middle of whatever i'm doing which might have actually included time-sensitive things like putting in the dairy order for the weekend. but i did it *anyways*, because it's my freaking job, and i agreed to do the whole job, not just whatever parts happen to appeal to me at any given moment.

so yeah, i can understand that hardy might not enjoy reviewing the criticism to find the legitimate problems. but he's the line developer. it is his job, and if he doesn't like that, he should either suck it up and do it anyways, or make room for someone that will.

and i have even LESS sympathy for him because i know he's got unpaid volunteers who've been busting their butts trying to do his job for him, and he *still* hasn't got his stuff in order. because let's be clear, every time it comes up the errata team have been busy assuring people that there is more to come, that they've submitted things and are waiting for it to get updated, and it just never seems to make it into the book. and we've been hearing these sorts of things from them for years. since halfway through SR5, at a minimum.

and all of those people who volunteer their time and effort? well, because hardy doesn't feel like doing his job of sifting through feedback to find legitimate criticism or addressing the community, guess who gets ripped into when they speak up in those various shadowrun communities? no, it's not the full time employee whose job it is to do these things, it's the unpaid volunteers who catch the brunt of it.

not liking some aspect of his job is not a valid excuse to not do his job.

Being openly dismissive of the community around your niche game when there is a major competitor on the horizon with a big money push behind it is also about a dumb a business stance as I can think of.

But it's the excuse he uses Or maybe he's doing (or trying to do) it but is just really bad at it.

You're not wrong, of course, but his and your understanding of his job may differ.


Might be a chicken and egg issue, though. I remember when Jason and others used to post here

I remember when they stopped to set up their own forum where nothing but cheers are allowed, when 5E came around and was roundly criticized, because they couldn't take what back then still was fairly constructive criticism. It's not like these issues are new. Jason didn't want to learn (or wasn't able to learn) for the past what, 10 years? So why should he now? On the countrary, under his direction, Shadowrun publishing has been a race to the ever deeper bottoms, employing less and less capable authors, pushing everyone capable who clung on away (Goodman, Zimmerman).

How many people see the problem the same way?
Hair of the dog, Scales of the Snake......

More of us think of it in these terms than you might think.

I'm not the only one to complain about inconsistencies in metaplot, in supposed technologies, in the ridiculously transparent attempts to wipe the slate and handwave new technological contexts into existence ...

I don't know that I was the first to propose that the owners of Shadowrun should employ an economist and an anthropologist (at least!) to get some sense around a milieu, but I've certainly done so, loudly, publically, several times.

We've had huge long discussions trying to make sense of the crazy logic of wireless VR, decking and all the rest of it.

Yup, it's a big ol' mess and whoever's at the helm is doing a fine job of addressing none of the concerns.

These are the ABSOLUTELY last people you want playtesting your game! You want the flaming asshole "That Guy" TRYING to break your game to make it rock solid. Games Workshop is doing a better job that what they've done in the past, but even they're still burying their head in the sand about Codex creep. Shadowrun has... gone in the other direction.


You can do wireless decking, but I've always said that the response of wireless VR should be 2/3 to 1/2 of what a wired connection can give you. Hell we see it to where you can get 10 Gbit ethernet, but 4G can get you 1.5 Gbit. Yes I know 5G can get much faster, but the range sucks massive balls compared to 4G.

oh, i know.

but the implication was made that they don't have playtesters, which is not true. they have playtesters. perhaps not the best ones, but they do have them.

not that it matters, considering they've just gotten a large free (to them) playtest in the form of people playing the game and stating their opinions, and they're too busy ignoring that feedback too. although, the quality of your playtesters isn't particularly relevant if you're just going to ignore everything they tell you anyways, so imo based on the perspective that the management are useless complaining about the quality of their playtesters is really the wrong place to put any complaints.

they could have the greatest playtesters in existence for all we know. when your opinion is that anyone who disagrees with you is not worth listening to because they're only part of the community, you'll have the same end result no matter who you have doing your playtesting.

(and at the very least, even bad playtesters will find *some* things).

Interestingly, that method of "testing" is surprisingly exactly how the FAA works, so maybe it's more of a wider mentality issue.

So, Everyone who believes Shadowrun 6e is an unplayable jumble....Please stand up so everyone can see you.

*stands up*

Honestly, I haven't played it so I don't know for a fact.

That said, given what I've seen reported here about metaplot as well as mechanics?

Maybe it's technically playable, but I'll stand up for it being an obvious mess. The worst parts appear not to have been fixed, and the best parts appear to have been broken.

Stahlseele, I know that we haven't always agreed, but I'm standing with you on this.

*stands up, jumps up and down, drop kicks Sixth World*

literally impossible to play? well, i wouldn't go that far. after all, you can make anything playable if you're sufficiently determined to pretend that everything is fine. i mean, one of the reviews i've seen for spawn of fashan consisted of someone who forced themselves to go through a playtest after all, and if you can force your way through a playtest of that, you can play ANYTHING.

worst edition of shadowrun i've seen in my life? absolutely.
should've been in (proper) playtesting for at least another 6 months? absolutely.
some of the worst editing i've seen in *any* role playing game? (including small companies with only 1-2 employees). yeah, i'd say so. (seriously, look at the errata. i'm not sure i've even seen *palladium* release something that poorly edited, and they're famous for crap editing).

and i will go one step further and say that i have no desire to play it. if you offered me a chance to play it for free, i would decline. i'd rather spend my time on something else. so at least in that sense, i feel comfortable in saying that for me at least, yes it is an unplayable mess, because as i've pointed out above, the only real criteria for whether something is playable or not is how much you're willing to do to force it to work, and i certainly don't have enough willingness to force SR6 to work.

so i'll stand up for that as well.

But guys, it's not unplayable if you do all the work yourself and houserule it back to 4E (or 3, depending on preferences).

I'll stand. I came in on Shadowrun 2nd ed. and played every edition since. In all that time I've never seen such a poorly put together product. I love the setting but the system has got to go. I think I'm just going to play 5th with some house rules to fix things. I may check back in for info on the meta-plot, providing it isn't just a rehash like the previous three, but I won't be throwing any money at the system.

If it's a bunch of people from Catalyst, then that is worse than useless. They'll just sit around the table and say "No George, I do believe your drek doesn't stink. What about mine?"
"No Mike, your drek doesn't stink either."



Well, then if I ever get to play again, then I'll recommend to the GM to stick with 4th edition and find house rules to fix the broken things.

Yeah, I think we're still waiting on some of the errata promised from when he posted here. But that was for 4th edition.

I liked Edge and the Karma from previous editions but always thought they were not useable enough. Too hard to replenish in normal by the book situations.
Edge in 6e at least is something that can used and replenished easily and outside of a classic Run environment. Now, it is true some Archtypes have little to do when not shooting at or being shot at so maybe the new system encourages characters to have a more complex skill set, and maybe have some relevant skill(s) that add to the characters experience in other than life or death run situations.

While Edge has its place in helping provide a cinematic feel to a game, I think the pendulum has maybe swung a bit too far the other way, becoming a necessity rather than a welcome bonus.

How can Edge in 6 be replentished outside classic run environments? By beating up random people? And quite on the countrary, with how Edge gain is tied to conflict situations, non-combat characters are now less, not more, viable. Really, with you, every day is opposite day, it seems.

*stands up*
Not because I've seen 6e in action, but because after the 5e clusterfrag, I see no reason to give CGL the benefit of the doubt.

True. Edge is more necessary. But it has evolved to where that way.... You can not have it in your build at all and trust superior dice pools, less applicable skills and be very focused to get you through or buy edge and pick your fights, encrease your odds in more scenarios.
The new system builds on that.
I am a person who never liked too many variables to dice pools when so many dice are involved. It slows the game down too much. They could have just went for more simulation and added more variables and more skills.
But going back to the first point...How do you expand on a system that way and not just make it applicable to a narrow set of situations? Which leaves all other skill options for characters and the characters themselves secondary processes. I guess you can also have environment variables for Matrix situations (hardware types, software types, condition, quality, network quality), or social situations (mood, mental attributes, whatever, man, woman) just to give some examples but that will slow things down even more.

Maybe what we need is for the people who think that 6e is the best edition yet to stand up.

Keep your seat, Nstol_wisper, we're already counting you on this one.