New survey!
This one's about your favorite editions


Results from old survey

Basically, this is a form asking different questions about what you like/dislike about 6e. Since it's been over a year since 6e was released, presumably a lot of the kneejerk reactions will have simmered down. Or maybe not!

I'll post the graphs in a week, but DM me if you want the raw google sheets data

Edit: To be clear I am NOT affiliated with CGL or any other game company. I just have too much time on my hands.

Edit: Results!

It's here! The survey results that nobody asked for! DM me if you want the raw data.

Image Gallery

A couple things to note:

* These are very small sample sizes! Even at 95% confidence level, you're going to have an interval of +/- 5 to 20 percent. It's also tricky to estimate population- reddit says it has 38,800 users, but only 200 or so are on at any given time. I'm sure some of those users never even saw the survey. I'm sure quite a few saw it, and ignored it! I overestimated total population to be registered users on each site, for a population of 60,000 total. (39,000 on reddit, 7,500 on official forms, and 13,500 on dumpshock).
* Not everyone answered every question. This is normal. However, some are more heavily impacted- IE, 52 people answered "what do you like about 6e", and 75 people answered "what don't you like about 6e."
* Where people came from (Dumpshock, Official Forums, Reddit) affects their responses: IE, a larger proportion of people on the Official Forums like 6e compared to Dumpshock. However, it's hard to say this for sure given the small sample sizes
* At minimum, understand this: 1.) This poll represents an estimate of the opinions of the three places I polled, it may not be representative of the entire SR playerbase. The phrase "Only 10% of people like 6e" is false. "Only 10% of those polled like 6e" is true. "Only about 10% of people on the official forums, dumpshock, and reddit like 6e" is close, but again there's large intervals, so this could be misleading. 2.) These results are significant. Sure, the actual amount of people that like 6e might not be 10%. It could be anywhere from 4 - 17%, with 95% confidence. However, doesn't that still tell us that less than half of the players on these three boards like SR 6e? 3.) Yes, some of these results are going to be obvious. Of the things people like about 6e, it's the setting, the theme the dice system that's been used since 4e, skills, and the matrix. People dislike editing quality, edge, mechanics in general, character creation, and the lack of clear rules.

The questions for this survey are as follows:

Single-select Questions

For these, the confidence range is 95%. I used this site to calculate the intervals. Use This one if you run into trouble.

What sent you to this survey?

* 44/79 (55.7%) of respondents came from /r/Shadowrun
* 17/79 (21.5%) of respondents came from Dumpshock
* 17/79 (21.5%) of respondents came from Official Forums
* 1/79 (1.3%) put down "ZeeMastermind" in the "Other." *I'm assuming they came from reddit, since I use other usernames on the official forums and Dumpshock (Middle School me thinks "ZeeMastermind" is a better username than I do). This is not me, I did not fill out the survey. I simply made this a "Other" question when it really shouldn't have been*

Have you bought a Shadowrun CRB before the release of 6e?

* 73/79 (92.4%, +/- 5.8%) "Yes"
* 1/79 (1.3%, +/- 2.5%) "No"
* 5/79 (6.3%, +/- 5.4%) "I pirated a CRB (Only select if you HAVE NEVER bought a CRB)"

Have you played Shadowrun before the release of 6e?

* 78/79 (98.7%, +/- 2.5%) "Yes"
* 1/79 (1.3%, +/- 2.5%) "No"

Did you buy the 6e Core Rulebook (6e)?

* 36/79 (45.6%, +/- 11%) "Yes"
* 22/79 (27.8%, +/- 9.9%) "No"
* 21/79 (26.6%, +/- 9.7%) "I pirated it (Only select if you DID NOT buy 6e after pirating it)"

Do you like 6e?

* 8/77 (10.4%, +/- 6.8%) "Yes"
* 53/77 (68.8%, +/- 10.3%) "No"
* 16.77 (20.8%, +/- 9.1%) "It's complicated"

Here is the breakdown of the first few questions by source:

Dumpshock
* 100% have bought a Shadowrun CRB before the release of 6e
* 0% have pirated and never bought a Shadowrun CRB before the release of 6e
* 100% have played Shadowrun before the release of 6e
* 23.53% pirated and never bought the 6e CRB
* 17.65% bought the 6e CRB
* 5.88% liked 6e
* 0% said "it's complicated" about liking 6e
* 17 total respondents

Official Forums
* 100% have bought a Shadowrun CRB before the release of 6e
* 0% have pirated and never bought a CRB before the release of 6e
* 100% have played Shadowrun before the release of 6e
* 76.47% bought the 6e CRB
* 17.65% pirated and never bought the 6e CRB
* 17.65% liked 6e
* 35.29% said "it's complicated" about liking 6e
* 17 total respondents

/r/Shadowrun
* 86.36% have bought a Shadowrun CRB before the release of 6e
* 11.36% have pirated and never bought a CRB before the release of 6e
* 97.73% have played Shadowrun before the release of 6e
* 43.18% bought the 6e CRB
* 31.82% pirated and never bought the 6e CRB
* 9.09% liked 6e
* 22.73% said "it's complicated" about liking 6e
* 44 total respondents

bizarro-ZeeMastermind
* 100% have bought a Shadowrun CRB before the release of 6e
* 0% have pirated and never bought a CRB before the release of 6e
* 100% have played Shadowrun before the release of 6e
* 100% bought the 6e CRB
* 0% pirated and never bought the 6e CRB
* 0% liked 6e
* 0% said "it's complicated" about liking 6e
* 1 total respondent

Multi-select Questions

I do not provide confidence ranges for these questions. Feel free to calculate it.

What do you like about 6e/why do you play 6e?

For this question, the percentage based on the number of people who answered the question is on the left. The percentage based on the total number of respondents is on the right.

* 44/53 (83%) OR 44/79 (55.7%) "I like the setting"
* 8/53 (15.1%) OR 8/79 (10.1%) "I like the mechanics"
* 7/53 (13.2%) OR 7/79 (8.9%) "I like the mechanics (Magic)"
* 10/53 (18.9%) OR 10/79 (12.7%) "I like the mechanics (Combat)"
* 14/53 (26.4%) OR 14/79 (17.7%) "I like the mechanics (Matrix)"
* 16/53 (30.2%) OR 16/79 (20.3%) "I like the mechanics (Skills)"
* 8/53 (15.1%) OR 8/79 (10.1%) "I like the mechanics (Character Creation)"
* 17/53 (32.1%) OR 17/79 (21.5%) "I like the mechanics (Core dice pool mechanics)"
* 7/53 (13.2%) OR 7/79 (8.9%) "I like the mechanics (Edge)"
* 3/53 (5.7%) OR 3/79 (3.8%) "I like Catalyst Game Labs"
* 9/53 (17%) OR 9/79 (11.4%) "I like the CRB Fiction"
* 6/53 (11.3%) OR 6/79 (7.6%) "My group plays 6e"
* 0/53 (0%) OR 0/79 (0%) "Word-of-mouth"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Price"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Editing Quality (Spelling, grammar, active voice, etc.)"
* 5/53 (9.4%) OR 5/79 (6.3%) "Easy to Learn"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Rules are Clear"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Style/Syntax (Word choice, tone, sentence flow, etc.)"
* 23/53 (43.4%) OR 23/79 (29.1%) "Theme/genre"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: I don't play it"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: The dapper shark meme: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/3671...zthwxfh6k31.png (1), https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/3652...afe7a729849.png (2)"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: The prospect of a less convoluted version of 5th Edition sounded nice..."
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: Previous player, wanted to try current rule set"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: Treating drugs like toxins for unified rules! Yay!"
* 1/53 (1.9%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: to be clear, I *don't* like what has been done with the setting since 6e, but I am broadly fine with most aspects of it before 6e, with the notable exception that I think forcing black ops cyberware to be constantly broadcasting an obvious signal is incredibly stupid, and that if you're going to go the extra mile to support matrix PCs who absolutely refuse to act outside the matrix (not that I consider that a worthy goal), it should be done by providing them options in the environment if and where it makes sense, not by having the entire planet decide that wired reflexes which formerly worked just fine without a matrix connection spontaneously don't function without it."

What don't you like about 6e/why don't you play 6e?

For this question, the percentage based on the number of people who answered the question is on the left. The percentage based on the total number of respondents is on the right.

* 9/76(11.8%) OR 9/79 (11.4%) "I dislike the setting"
* 46/76 (60.5%) OR 46/79 (58.2%) "I dislike the mechanics"
* 29/76 (38.2%) OR 29/79 (36.7%) "I dislike the mechanics (Magic)"
* 34/76 (44.7%) OR 34/79 (43%) "I dislike the mechanics (Combat)"
* 27/76 (35.5%) OR 27/79 (34.2%) "I dislike the mechanics (Matrix)"
* 19/76 (25%) OR 19/79 (24.1%) "I dislike the mechanics (Skills)"
* 35/76 (46.1%) OR 35/79 (44.3%) "I dislike the mechanics (Character Creation)"
* 16/76 (21.1%) OR 16/79 (20.3%) "I dislike the mechanics (Core dice pool mechanics)"
* 48/76 (63.2%) OR 48/79 (60.8%) "I dislike the mechanics (Edge)"
* 40/76 (52.6%) OR 40/79 (50.6%) "I dislike Catalyst Game Labs"
* 16/76 (21.1%) OR 16/79 (20.3%) "I dislike the CRB Fiction"
* 6/76 (7.9%) OR 6/79 (7.6%) "I do not want to learn a new edition"
* 31/76 (40.8%) OR 31/79 (39.2%) "My group plays a different edition"
* 15/76 (19.7%) OR 15/79 (19%) "Word-of-mouth"
* 11/76 (14.5%) OR 11/79 (13.9%) "Price"
* 58/76 (76.3%) OR 58/79 (73.4%) "Editing Quality (Spelling, grammar, active voice, etc.)"
* 17/76 (22.4%) OR 17/79 (21.5%) "Not easy to Learn"
* 45/76 (59.2%) OR 45/79 (57%) "Rules are not Clear"
* 31/76 (40.8%) OR 31/79 (39.2%) "Style/Syntax (Word choice, tone, sentence flow, etc.)"
* 3/76 (3.9%) OR 3/79 (3.8%) "Theme/genre"
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: The writers broke coherence between fiction and mechanics."
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: The mechanics make no sense, they do not reflect real world gun fights nor combat in any form. They are useless at everything they try do combat-wise."
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: Doubling Down on shit nobody liked in the previous Editions. Some games arnt ment to be simplified. Also lookin at you Todd Howard"
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: Playing Pathfinder"
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: Oversimplification"
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: urning Seattle into Hong Kong because the HK people left is weaksauce. The whole Fiat-EMP plot is horrible and the missing SuperSoldiers from Hell are not better either. It's peak MagicRun."
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: disliking matrix rules was a bit broad. I like the idea of technomancers. I don't like the current existing rules for them. I also don't like what has been done with the setting since 6e started in terms of plot."
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: The nerfing of cyberware/bioware that started in 5th edtion. I do not know why you had to make decking so stupidly expensive and making Street Sams all but unplayable."
* 1/76 (1.3%) OR 1/79 (1.3%) "Other: Low Production Quality"

Which of the following have you gone to for information on new games in the past year?

* 64/77 (83.1%) "reddit[.]com/r/shadowrun"
* 25/77 (32.5%) "reddit[.]com/r/rpg"
* 16/77 (20.8%) "Another reddit sub"
* 47/77 (61%) "Official Shadowrun Forums"
* 31/77 (40.3%) "Dumpshock Forums"
* 15/77 (19.5%) "RPG.net"
* 12/77 (15.6%) "Another forum"
* 39/77 (50.6%) "Drive-Thru RPG"
* 33/77 (42.9%) "Drive-Thru RPG Reviews"
* 13/77 (16.9%) "Another website"
* 17/77 (22.1%) "Local Game Store (FLGS)"
* 8/77 (10.4%) "SCN Discord (Shadowrun Community Network, previously Shadowcasters Network)"
* 22/77 (28.6%) "Another Discord Server"
* 2/77 (2.6%) "CGL Mailing List"
* 3/77 (3.9%) "ShadowRN Mailing List"
* 2/77 (2.6%) "Other Mailing List"
* 9/77 (11.7%) "Official CGL Website"
* 13/77 (16.9%) "Official Shadowrun Website"
* 1/77 (1.3%) "Other: srg"
* 1/77 (1.3%) "Other: 4chan"
* 1/77 (1.3%) "Other: Shadowrunners' Union Facebook group"
* 1/77 (1.3%) "Other: TheRPGsite, RPGpub"

Open-ended Question

What are your candid thoughts on 6e?

* Completely useless for quantitative analysis, but may help generate ideas that I hadn't thought of.
* Link

Answered. Dunno how far that will get anything, but.

Same. If enough people say we like the setting, but need fun and playable rules before we will spend cash, maybe someone at CGL will get the message. Maybe.

Answered as well, will be interested to see the results.

I hold no expectations and wouldn't be surprised if the result is published as "we're awesome and people love 6e!" So that's my main motivator for doing the survey: I'm curious to see how they play it off.

I was surprised to find Dumpshock mentioned and that pirating books was on there as well.

Some of the old errata was contributed by people on Dumpshock, so I guess they still recognize this forum as a resource.

And pirating is pretty much them accepting reality, though I wouldn't expect everyone who took that survey to be completely honest about that.

Oh, this survey is just to sate my curiosity, it isn't an official CGL survey or anything like that. It might be useful to the folks who like to make hacks of SR, but maybe not. I mentioned dumpshock since I go here.

CGL: Yeah, we'll get back to you later on that.

*On the 37th of Never*
CGL: Hey guys? Guys? Hey why is the universe gone?


Do they honestly believe ANYONE is going to click the "I pirated the CRB" options? Even if you did, would anyone EVER admit it?

I'm not collecting user data for that very reason. I think it's important to represent that group- since even though they don't directly buy, their participation in SR spreads it by word of mouth and will increase the player-base, therefore indirectly increasing sales.

I still have 2 days left on the survey but right now it's a rate of 6.7% have pirated a CRB prior to 6e's release (And NEVER bought one), and 25.3% who pirated 6e and NEVER bought the 6e CRB. The first rate does seem like a low number, but keep in mind that someone who, say, bought the 2e CRB and pirated every other edition will not fall into that category. The second rate seems closer, since it's also another 29.3% who didn't buy or pirate the book.

Both may very well be lower than the actual rate, especially since if someone pirates a book and buys it later, I count it as a "buy."

Someone did put their username in the comments of the last question after putting in "pirate" on both of those questions- I've been debating whether or not to clear that data for them.

I would say yes. I would also send them a message saying that this might not be a good idea to do in the future.

The funny thing being the folks who took their stuff and left after The Great Debacle then turned around, made their own roleplaying game, and seeded the internet with the product files themselves with Creative Copyright licenses.

Goes to show you which people you should support, huh?

The hardcover book is gorgeous, too. Kinda kills the "piracy destroyed my TTRPG" argument if a company releases all its products like that and is still, you know, alive and selling stuff.

I love the discussion over on the official forum. The OP definitely knows their stuff and is able to accurately distinguish between facts and interpretation of facts, much to the chagrin of 6e fanbois mwuahahaha.

That said, (and because my GM accuses me of being a negative troll,) let it be known that I am still hoping for a playable and fun and simple and coherent and well-edited (and preferably well presented) 7e. I just stopped betting on it ever happening.

Edit: forgot to give 5 karma to AquaBlackOB. I am a huge fan of your work, do please keep it up!

I am cursed with a statistics education. Much obliged!

As for 7e- although I don't mind when game rules change significantly (Target Numbers to Thresholds, Edge in theory), this is difficult to do. With any project, you have to balance quantity of features, quality of features, and resources available. A lot of the successful indie and small-press RPGs tend to be lightweight narrative or OSR games for a reason.

Even SR doesn't have a ton of resources available despite being a "large" gaming company, because it's not a large industry to begin with. If you want a crunchy game with a lot of rules, and want those rules to be high-quality, you need a lot of time and money.

Your other option is to build on what you have. IE, create a "5.5e" or a "3.5e" or whatever suits you, so long as the end result is solid. The troubling thing is that the transition from 5e to 6e looks a lot like this in some ways. The abbreviated skill list is the logical next step from skill groups. A lot of rules appear to be C+V, with some things taken out. For example, multi-attack is almost the same as it was in 5e, except there's no indication of a maximum number of attacks. And then some rules are changed, but others are not (Maximum +4 bonus to any attribute via cyberware or other means, unless that attribute is magic, in which case there is no initiation limit)

But we could talk about 6e all day. At the end of the day, I understand that a small company isn't going to be able to build a feature-heavy, crunchy game from the ground up and have it be high quality. But they aren't building from the ground up.

I am not against change as such, but when a rule system requires a Master's degree of work before you can sit down and play, I think we should at the very least expect it to be a lot more fun than the other ten or twenty systems we could have mastered and played in the time it takes to read, learn, tweak, houserule, errata and bend Shadowrun 5 (or, from what I understand, 6) into something playable. That is one of the two reason my group plays 2.5, the other being the cognitive dissonance in playing a retro-tech game where they tried to squeeze in then-contemporary tech (looking at YOU, 4e) - which is really a setting issue more than a rule issue.

(Pure speculation on my part, but:) I think one reason many people are so vocal about what is sometimes referred to as the 'dumpster fire editions' of Shadowrun is that 4e was actually a pretty coherent crunchy system, and the original setting is something many people really enjoy, so the disappointment with CGL's two editions is massive. Shadowrun came close to being great, then CGL took over. And now the gaming world is talking about D&D instead, bah.

It's how it goes. I still can't fathom why they went with the triangular number sequence (1/3/6/10) instead of (2/4/6/8) for modifiers in 5e. It adds nothing.

I think part of why the community is vocal is that it has a great setting, and that the video games are fun. Then, people get into the "actual game" and it's such a slog to get started.

Besides the problems with the ruleset itself, I find it very disappointing that in 2020 we still have a system that acts like a system from the 80s: "here is how to fight, cast spells and hack stuff (and maybe drive) and do some stuff like healing/lockpicking/etc.".

Shadowrun is mostly a game about planning and executing heists and there are no rules to help with these aspects. It's still "use a published adventure or figure out how to build a corporate research center and how its security works".

Why not? FASA did it in the first place.

There are a ton of Kickstarter projects with budgets under $50k putting out similarly sized projects to SR1 today. For example: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ettin/hard-wired-island

Producing a relatively large game is not necessarily a huge investment if you have competent people running the project.

CGL hasn't, for many years now, and it shows.

That is a good point. SR 1e is only about 200 pages, and I think the word count per page is smaller, too. But I don't think FASA had any capital until it started selling- so, they had even less resources than CGL. On the other hand, at least for the first book, they didn't have any deadlines.

I think if they had just let 6e sit until the holiday buying season, they would've been able to incorporate that first round of errata, spent more time editing/playtesting, and release a better edition. There's a question of why it had to be released at that gencon, why it wasn't ready then, etc.

The main things people keep going back to are that the owners of the company don't care about SR (So who knows how much resources/time they have to work with), and that Hardy isn't good at his job. I don't know enough to say if the latter's true or not, since a lack of resources can impact editing quality as well. But I will almost never blame the people actually doing the work of writing or rules development because pay in this industry is crap, and it's the responsibility of the publisher to ensure quality of the product in a situation where all the writing is work-for-hire.

I mean, they had years to work on it in the background, and they started with a more-or-less functional game (given that the company made both 4e and 5e... they may not be some peoples' favourite editions, but they did function). they had years of feedback on both editions to figure out what people wanted as well.

both of those are rather substantial advantages that the original authors writing this stuff from scratch never had, in addition to the established fan base.

Woo! I got a new survey out- this one's about your favorite editions

Done. Looking forward to the results - and the analysis!

Survey results

Thanks to penllawen for editing!

TL;DR

• Majority of answers came from r/Shadowrun (40.3%) and RPG.net (25.2%).
  
• 4chan /tg/ (10.1%), SR Union Facebook Group (5.0%), and the ShadowRN Mailing List (4.4%) made up a sizeable chunk as well.
  
• In general, the average amount of “Like” percentage is a little higher if the player has played the edition, and a lot higher if they’ve bought a book for the edition. Or perhaps they are simply more likely to play and buy a game that they like?
  
• High score on books owned is 389. I did check with this respondent- they have a copy of every book, AND they have multiple printings and languages for some. They have extras of some of these books for table use as well.
  
• The most liked edition is 3e, with a ratio of 146 likes to 15 dislikes.
  
• Too close to call to apply this to the rest of the population, though. 3e's proportion of likes-to-dislikes is 91%, and 2e's is 86%. Their confidence intervals overlap, meaning that it's still possible for 2e to be more liked than 3e in the total population.
  
• With 95% confidence, 6e is less liked than all other editions, even when you account for if players have played it before or bought a book for it.
  
• There is no overlap here.
  
• Make sure to look at the margin of error, not just the sample result. For example, the proportion of people who like 1e and 5e are close enough that we can’t say which one is more “liked” among the total population.

In the case of Hardy, he's the Line Editor. The buck stops with him as far as writing quality and editing, and you can trace a clear decline in both over his tenure. Having read some of his own work, that doesn't surprise me.

Oh, that's fair. I'm thinking more along the lines of "editing 100k words effectively in 1 week is difficult for the best of us." Editing and writing are different sets of skills, but one can inform the other. If they were doing 1-2 books a month like D&D 3e in its heyday, maybe a bit of sloppy editing would be understandable (And more the cause of folks upstairs wanting to push product fast).

If the quality has changed for the worse over the years, though, that's not a good thing. There seem to be more TTRPG players these days, and it's not like CGL is rushing this year's books out the door. COVID's delayed Street Wyrd and the untitled rigger book due to printer constraints, so we "should" expect those to be higher quality if they're sitting with the editor for longer.

But if you've got more experience, and you're putting out less product each year, then what's the holdup? Both of those things should increase the quality of work. Nobody loses skill over time. Something stinks. ^{(And no, it's not just the fish I keep under my tinfoil hat)}

Even in the case of 6e core there was no reason to rush it. They didn't actually make the GenCon release anyway.

What are you talking about? They sold physical copies of the 6e book at GenCon 2019. That's what started a whole kerfuffle with the code for the digital PDF working for everyone (Not a 1-time use thing)