.... there would be more traffic in the Forums. But it seems the opposite is true. As of 16:40 today, I'm the only poster on DS!

That is sad indeed.
I recall times where this place was bustling with traffic.

I hereby resolve to visit more often.

I agree. It reached the point that I strongly considered starting up a PbP game myself.

Countervailing arguments had to do with a lot of manual labour, plus a couple of work contracts coming in.

But it's still on the cards.

Isolation?

You should visit the big box, home improvement store where I work. We've been so busy we're well on our way to our 5th million dollar week in a row. Two years ago having even one million dollar week was a really big deal.

Yeah, some poor buggers are stuck keeping the rest of us in potato chips.

Never stopped working here. Not that I was playing SR in years either way

I basically lurk around here every day, i just rarely see a topic of interest to me anymore . .

I'm also one of those Essential Workers (Med Lab Tech). For me life really hasn't changed.

Also I thought that traffic to this site and Shadowrun in general was down due to the drekshow known as Shadowrun 5 and/or 6.

Honestly, Catalyst should just give up the ghost and let some other company have a shot at Shadowrun.

Ditto. Turns out, farming matters. Side contracts just make paying the mortgage and fixing the truck easier. But people seem to have some weird objection to starving, I just don't know ...



Amen. Could they really do any worse?

Honestly, for two pins, if I could find a backer, I'd try to buy it out and do better myself.

I miss Shadowrun badly! Someone post something to let us know the real thing (i.e. anything before CFD) is still alive and kicking punk *ss somewhere, please!

Well there is this thing but no wait, that's just real life imitating the game again.

I am here!

Sounding off

I'm here for all it's worth. No gaming, but the hubby and I are trying to put a system together with what works from 4th and 5th, plus a bunch of house rules.

He's essential personnel so it's not going very fast.

Yeah, I remember long ago, a person could pose a question and get a reply in a fraction of an hour. Sometimes 2 answers posted almost simultaneously.

I know I sort of lost some interest when 4E came out and lost almost all interest when the next edition came out. Now, I am lucky to drop in a couple of times a month and that seems adequate to keep up with all the new posts.

I wonder if a Kickstarter campaign would work? It seems to have worked well for the computer game. If you think about it, it seems the creative/editorial part of the company is pretty much fan level. Catalyst just exploits things and takes the profits.

I work in the department of Infectious Diseases and Vaccines of a large pharma company, so I've been rather busy as well.

I drop in here about once per day to check the one PbP I'm in.

Alright, farothel! A good person to develop as a contact.

Its weird, I tend to lurk here a fair bit, but dont post that much. Same with Reddit, and the Old School Shadowrun group on Facebook.

I'm currently laid off, but I've been regularly running a classic 2050s game using 2e every week through Discord. I just...dont post that much I guess.

But for the sake of socialisation, online or otherwise, I can certainly start.

it's tough when you stopped caring several editions ago

I had a realization the other day that if a character in game were suddenly not acting like themselves, the questions would be a laundry list of what might be taking over their body; bugs, nanites, scary trees, shedim, etc.

I've been hoping for something interesting in the metaplot but then there's some weirdness about how a huge chunk of the UCAS military gets Vanished in a fog? Because that's how the military works. All nice and clumped together.

Still busy at work these days. U.S. military/ base security so yeah, also "essential personnel". Nice to see familiar faces though. Living in New Orleans now and went down to the French Quarter to have a look. If it's any consolation those streets are about as empty as the boards are these days.

Logged in, SIM running hot and SINless as ever. Been running silent after a 'run went south but the heat is down and I'm back in business.

I've stopped caring about the official books since SR5 and I've been branching on my own rules (and mostly own fluff as well) since then so it's getting a bit hard to be able to share things with people here.
I still stop by from time to time.
I'm a bit more active in the Shadowrun Returns UGC development circles now...

Well, I for one had totally forgotten about this forum until about 3 days ago when I found it looking up edition info to get back into Shadowrun. When I did find it though it was a moment of “HOLY CRAP!! DUMPSHOCK! HOW DID I FORGET ABOUT THIS!” So hopefully will be using the boards more shortly.

My problem is that seeing the shitshow that's 6th Edition is just extremely demotivating, even though I don't actually plan to play it.

I honestly haven't looked at 6th at all. What exactly did they screw up so badly that literally everyone on the server appears to despise it?

Also, I just realized that while there are tags for shadowrun 3-5, there is no post icon for shadowrun 6. Fitting.

I got stuck at 4th edition. It's what I know best, it's what I do best, it's where I feel in familiar territory and kind of at home.
Also, I still have a gaming group or three (online these days) that are still willing to play the fourth edition. Now my brother has joined a gaming group that'll play sixth edition. I'll see how that turns out.
I also still try to solve problems with more drones. Habits and all.

I won't presume to speak for anyone but myself, but the metaplot went off the rails in 4th, and 5th was such an insult to gamers (incoherent, inconsistent, ill-conceived and haphazardly edited - and not proofread) that 6th had to make a monumental effort to bring us back - but it unfortunately repeated the mistakes from 5th (unplayable at publication) while driving the metaplot even more off the rails (the phrase 'serial sharkjumping' springs to mind).

Good thing we have Cyberpunk Red...

It already starts at the core resolution mechanic: CGL wanted to streamline 6th edition by replacing the ton of obscure dicepool modifiers with Edge gains and greatly expanded options for using Edge. Players were supposed to constantly gain Edge from cool stuff they do and cool gear they use, to be able to do more cool stuff. But having every previous bonus contribute Edge, which could be used in every test, would mean way too much Edge, so the Edge gained from various sources comes with restrictions tacked on (e.g. cyberears give you a point, but you can only use that point on hearing tests). That was still too much Edge, so some gear does give classic DP modifiers again. Bottom line, the simplification is that some stuff gives you Edge, some stuff gives you Edge with a rider you need to keep track of, and some stuff just adds dice. Far easier than just modifiers, right?


And like I said, that's just the start of a huge dumpster fire.

So they got rid of some mechanics but not really by renaming them? Wow that is dumb.

as one example of something that got removed and turned into something that only gives edge (I would say probably the most visible and widely mocked example): armour.

no really. armour doesn't prevent damage. it increases your defence rating (or whatever they call it), which you compare to an opponent's attack rating (or whatever) when they try to shoot you. if your defence is better by a large enough margin, you get one point of edge, which oddly enough is not limited to helping with soak rolls or anything like that, and which is also the only thing that theoretically could provide any sort of assistance in actually preventing damage from an attack. if it your defence rating is low enough compared to their attack rating, your opponent gains a point of edge, which is not required to be used for the attack in any way.

so armour no longer helps prevent damage. unless you use the edge gained (if any) to do so, that is, which you are under no obligation to do... leading to the possibility that extremely heavy armour could prevent no damage and instead assist you in performing complex gymnastic stunts.

...
Let us not go to 6E. It is a silly system.

They claimed to streamline and declutter stuff but ended up making it more convoluted and cluttered. As another example, the newly released gun book (Firing Squad) contains no less than seven different shoulder stocks, including those "technically not a shoulder stock" arm braces which only exist due to the particularities of US gun laws. And each of those comes with an array of five different modifiers to the "Attack Rating" (see Jaid's post) depending on range. Easy, right?

I can see the recent threads apply to my question to some degree. But those edition changes happened long before quarantining became a reality. Since that change, I have noticed even fewer people posting on DS.

Are our members being drawn away by emergency measures? Worn down by 18 hour days? Or, let an overactive imagination not be right, dying?

DS has been on a downward slope for a long time, now.

I have a strange feeling - and I could easily be wrong about this - that Shadowrun may be becoming a money losing property, owing to ages of abuse. Any thoughts on that?

It's really strange how the feeling that the game is dying a very sad death actually makes me not want to care. I've been sticking with SR3 for years, so I'd have thought that whatever happened past SR4 would not affect me. Yet somehow, knowing that somehow, there will be nothing new, absolutely nothing new to discuss, it makes me not really wanting to come back even here.

I saw some streamers who were into Shadowrun try it, get halfway through the first combat, and quit entirely. I fear Catalyst finally made a bad enough game to kill the line.

Wasn't that SR5?

I'm very probably biased, but I really feel like nobody cared that they made an SR6. And I'm pretty sure that's because it was the people writing on SR5 doing it.

I have to admit the only reason I check ANY Shadowrun board these days is for the lore. I'm still holding out hope for something decent.

4th mortally wounded Shadowrun for me. 5th decapitated it. 6th pissed on the corpse and lit it on fire.

It's been a factor in decreasing my visits around here.

I and my group have pretty much quit playing SR of any edition. 5th ed was the one that did it in for me and that was after coming back from about a decade off to play 4th ed. I actually really enjoyed a lot of what 4th ed did for the game as far as stream lining things like the matrix (I've played every edition up to and including 5th). 5th ed was just so piss poor as far as quality and actual fun that we just gave up on it and went back to 4th for a while but even then, the massive dice pools and what not just put us off. None of us have any interest in 6th ed after looking through some of the rules (Edge is soooo stupid in 6th).
I do check in on DS at least weekly but I think it's habit more than anything else at this point.

So I see a lot of migration from the "Hate 6th edition" subforum to here. Nothing after 3rd edition is worth consideration. Yet, there is a new PbP game, 3rd edition, starting up Here, been up for 4 days, and I'm the only taker, and me being a 4Eth edition guy!

So, put your role playing where your complaints are. Come join. I run the risk of having to endure a biopocalypse all by myself!

Now, now. It's just a hypothetical biopocalypse. A theoretically possible biopocalypse of limited parameters.

I mean, it could just be a strictly localised anomaly. Localised and temporary. Of minimal significance.

A rounding error.

I mean, really. Would I do that to you? Look into my eyes, before you answer, and see the humanity deep within.

It's that very humanity that worries me.

I don't know if I should call you an optimist, or a masochist. I lost faith in Shadowrun with 5th edition. The ONLY two good things with that version is the fact that positive and negative qualities are not just multiples of five and Karmagen is the default system.

Reddit probably is a huge factor, besides CGL actively squeezing the life out of the product line.



Well...uhm...about that Karmagen thing...

Yeah, it's kind of funny what memory does concerning house rules and fan supplements.

BeCKs was awesome in SR3 and at a certain time essentially considered the standard generation in a local community... despite being entirely fan-made.

Amazing quotes, there, R v D. Funny how words can come back to bite you.

There's been a number of factors that led to the decline here. Most of them started with CGL, not to place blame per se. For one they wanted their own forum as they caught more and more flak on here, in no small part due to the allegations of embezzlement. The freelancers were usually around here until they moved over to the new page, so that was a part of it.

That's not to say that DS hasn't done plenty to establish it's own reputation over the years. Not exactly known as a friendly bunch, let's be honest. Personally I don't see a big issue with not using kid gloves when discussing a game like SR.

The last few editions didn't help at all. For many people the metaplot had been a big draw to the game. It was unique. Over the last few editions there hasn't been a lot of innovation with it. Some people, like Rusty, I'm still a big fan of. It's great to see fans start getting their ideas on paper. Bull has been involved for years and was one of the old guard here. When Jason Hardy first came in I was a fan of his as well, but over the years I haven't seen much (personally) that drew me back in. I don't know them personally but from what I do know they're generally good people.

Do love Echo's artwork though. So there's that.

Ironically D&D is doing great these days. The culture seems to have shifted towards it more. So if SR isn't doing well that seems like it would be an issue on the publisher.

Or maybe RL is imitating the game too much now and people don't see much difference. I live in New Orleans now where the Hard Rock Hotel partially collapsed in on it's self last year and it's still just sitting there, along with some human remains stuck in the rubble. So some things like the arcology no longer seem as outlandish to me. Not to mention COVID, and politics in general. So maybe SR is less a draw when although the dystopian conflict is going on down the street.

I will say though that my Friendly Neighborhood Game Store has two main systems on the shelf: D&D and SR. So that gives me hope. I didn't feel a lot of incentive to pick up Cutting Black after looking over the review however. I'll hold out hope that they'll bring it in a better direction.

The main problem with Cutting Black is not that it's premise boils down to "Let's copy CyberPunk RED's 'The Appartment' with more Michael Bay style explosions!".

It's not even the many plot sink-holes. Nor the apparent total lack of editing with missing game stats.

It's the writing style itself. The book is borderline unreadable from the way it's written alone.