THANK you. Jeez, I'm glad SOMEone said it.

I am under the impression that if you want to run an older (pre 2060) campaign, the older sourcebooks are a wealth of information, but if you wanted more up-to-date information, you turn to the new geography books. There is a lot of good information (especially about Europe) that is added to each nation through the sourcebooks. Remember, NAN 1 and NAN 2 were both half-adventure and half-sourcebook, leaving very little room for concrete in-game information other than paragraph-sized blurbs. The NAN are covered in much more depth in Shadows of North America than those original sourcebooks. I'm not saying you should go out and buy the worldbooks right now (buy only what you are ever going to use, I say).

As for the SOTA books, they aren't just tech toys (in fact, very little is about tech). Most of the stuff are rules fragments from out of print sourcebooks that were grandfathered into the SOTA books and updated to 3rd edition rules. For example, SOTA: 2063 has a section from the Corporate Security Handbook, a Genetics section from Shadowtech, Merc information from Fields of Fire and some updated information from Awakenings. I highly doubt the material in the SOTA books will be added to a new upcoming sourcebook (barring Shadowrun 4th edition), but I don't believe you will find the information in them necessary UNLESS you don't own the original sourcebook material. The easy way to preview said information is to look at the shadowrunrpg.com website and read the developer's say blurbs under the products in the Product Catalog.

I personally think that the SOTA format is a good way to usher in some of this information to a new generation of shadowrun players who aren't going to pony up lots of money on eBay to buy original sourcebooks.

I'm not. It's not a response that adds anything to the discussion, and can often be used to ward off valid criticism.

~J

Adam, Garland:

In this context, I think what Deacon meant was a reference to "screwing the pooch", which was, I believe, early- to mid-Twentieth-Century fighter-pilot/aircraft-test-pilot slang for a very serious mistake in piloting, or an error in judgement--usually leading to (1) a damaged or destroyed aircraft, (2) an injured or dead pilot, or (3) BOTH.

--Foreigner

Except the Rigger, who starts out powerful and whose power growth is bounded only by money and Etiquette rolls…

~J

It sounds like the guy just wanted to list everything that was printed and write a little editorial on each power. I have zero clue as to what this guy is trying to say in his "eloquent" review. Yes, that is how that GM's words were described. Eloquent.

Isn't one of the hallmarks of magic in the 6th world that it's constantly evolving and changing the way things work? There are parts of the rant that sound like this isn't something understood, even though it is very much the reality of the game world. (please no qualifiers on the usage of the word 'reality' in reference to a fictional game world... I realize that it is fictional).

I guess I don't understand why there's such a problem with any of it. I found the entire... what, four pages... of new adept powers interesting. It gave me a slew of new ideas for character types and NPCs for my games. I also realize that I'm the final judge of what I allow in my game and if I wanted, I could say "no" to any of it without attacking the idea that magic evolves with the world.

I'm still getting over the use of the word "eloquent".

Not while writing

BTW: How come this thread isn't in the SOTA2064 section?

Funny. I can't seem to find that in my copy of MitS.

The numbers used to come from Awakenings IIRC, and have never been refuted to my knowledge.

I'll get back to you after lunch.

On another note, I love the search and copy/paste capability of the new PDFs.

………

Leave it to me to completely forget that I've got that on my hard drive

~J

I'm not sure about that first sentence. I might be missing your point, but it seems if I wanted to make say a driver character, I would PROBABLY want to make him a mundane rigger. I wouldn't have to, but a rigger is much better at driving. That just seems to be common sense to me.

As has been said many times before, adepts are specialist. Yes, an adept can make for an excellent sam OR face OR fixer. However, I've got a mundane character already written up who excels in all three fields simultaneously with 6+ in all relevant skills and nice, fat pools to draw on. She might not be as good as a dedicated adept in any one of these areas, but when our face adept tries to fight, or our sam adept tries to talk, well... Sucks to be him.

Even within the category of 'sam', it's easier to make a sam who's good at melee, an assortment of firearms and generally just pretty nasty than it is to make an adept, although the adept will excel at any one of those categories.

Lovely. I scanned right over that effing line.

They changed enough goddamn things between 2e and 3e, so why shouldn't the more logical explanation in Awakenings (1% are magical, maybe 10% of those are actually functional, and maybe 10% of them are full mages) be any different?

Earlier books did, too.

As someone who made a Social Adept NPC while it was in the mail and fleshed her out further as soon as SOTA64 was in my hands, I can assure you that they are not that unbalancing.

However... The aspects in which they are unbalancing is justified by the simple fact that it's magic. You should be able to do things mundanes can't. That was kind of the whole point behind physads IMO as to explain people who are so exceedingly better than you at something that there had to be some force behind it (which, btw, also explains the bias against them in sports)

Personally I say, "Screw the mundanes." They rule the world and outnumber magically-active metahumans 99-to-1. What more do you want?

Of course its adding something to the game. Its only ineffecient if one doesn't see or want to see the way to use the power effeciently. And why is it that there is an assumption that the social powers are any more powerful than powerful spells like any of the mind rape and influence spells?

Well, the adept looks like they have better eyes and ears, until you read the part where they can't turn their eye/ear powers off. The Adept with thermal is just always boned in any area that you don't want thermal vision on.

No worse than an uncybered troll or dwarf.

Care to provide a quote where it actually says so?
An adept can use any power at will and in turn he can decide not to use a power at will as well ...

Apart from Decking (for sure) and Rigging (arguably) I'd be able to create an awakened character who is better at any single function within the game than an unawakened one /and/ there's absolutely nothing to stop an adept from using a couple of judicious bits of cyber where required (Geasa are wonderful, aren't they?). Adepts have always had the advantage over the equivalent cyber in social situations - there's no TN penalties for social skills for having 6 essence, are there? Plus greater flexibility and obscurity that comes with the ability being magic. Doorway cyber scanners - NP.

Finally, what happens when an adept wants to upgrade Improved Reflexes from 2 to 3 - initiate a couple of times, spend some karma and bang, it's done. Have you checked the surgery rules at all? This image I'm getting of the books is something like

"Lets add loads of new cyber and bioware, but make it really limited, easy to damage, difficult to replace and almost impossible to upgrade. Plus we'll add some inherant flaws."
"Lets add loads of new adept abilities". "Kewl"

BTW - I also thought that adept powers can be switched off...

Strictly by the rules a player cannot choose to geas powers or magic loss for an adept, only the GM can. IE: It's not up to you. You can't depend on that.

Also, all the karma spent on initiation and power points a sam spends on skills. That adds up like crazy after a while.