I've been playing a lot of Exalted lately, and there are some nice elements in its rules and outlook I think would do well in Shadowrun. I'm mostly referring to Stunt rules - basically, they encourage players to come up with cool, dramatic descriptions for their actions by giving bonus dice for the corresponding test, in an amount equivalent to the coolness of the description.

Anything more than "I whack him with my sword" is worth one extra die. Something more involved, using setting elements and such, would be worth two dice, and a description so outrageously good it made everyone on the table go "wow" is worth three. Besides bonus dice, Stunts also allow their performers to recover their magic-juice, which can be vital in the midst of a long fight.

So, what I want to do is to develop a similar system for Shadowrun, which I think is also going to require changing the basic rules. The game already has die pools, which provide "free bonuses" to actions the game designers tought would be more common in the game (combat and other related activities). With a stunt system, they'd probably have to go away.

If I keep the same 1-2-3 scale for grading stunts, it means the amount of dice thrown in combat (and related) tests, is going to be drastically reduced. On the other hand, it will give a reason for players to go all John Woo during a fight, which can never be a bad thing. They will also be able to stunt everything, not just combat, which can mean non-violent actions are likely to get more screen-time.

So, what do you think? Any suggestions?

i guess you could make a 'cool pool', or something. gaining cool points (heh) adds non-refreshing dice to the pool, to a maximum equal to the character's max karma pool.

you might check out feng shui; the "cool description = better chance of succeeding" is originally from that game, i believe.

Well, since you seem to hate pools anyway, why don't you only allow to get dice from the combat pool if they make stunt descriptions? If the combat pool is out is fair to think that the character is to overwhelmed by combat to do it in a fashionable way.

The Silhouette CORE rules have "Genre points" that players and the GM can give out to characters who do something "cool" that can be exchanged for various "special effects". I think this was originally adapted from Feng Shui, but I really like it (especially as an alternative to giving out XP, which I can't really do that often).

There's something like 10 or more special effects, and you can pick which are appropriate for your game. Some are like a "signature item", where your character can have a gun that's slightly better than normal, or "burst of angst" that lets you trade a temporary loss of Psyche for a temporary boost in another attribute (obviously anime-inspired), things like that. I really like it -- well worth checking out (and no, I'm not getting paid by DP9 to stump their system, I just really like it ).

After playing exalted a lot, I got a character (messily) killed. It's complicated, but it involves pulling the release on a glider and launching into melee combat from 5 meters above.

I just invite my players to take the Daredevil edge and then watch carefully what they do with it. The one player who has taken it is looking forward to doing "stunts" with that extra karma die usable only for those "stunts." 'Course, I'm not sure that she recognizes that it doesn't lower the TN at all