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Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (Adam)
And we're giving out free eyeliner at GenCon.

You wait until now, when I've already got all my wedding plans and honeymoon and shit planned out, to tell me this?! I'd've probably shown up for that!!
hahnsoo
QUOTE (Patrick Goodman)
Now I'll go out on a ledge: That's occurred to them, too. There are penalties for defaulting to an attribute (as there are now in SR3). Still working out what those penalties will be at this time. As I said, this has occurred to the designers as well. We play the game too, remember.

So my question is, what's the point in simplifying the mechanic if you complicate the rules to come up with the numbers behind the mechanic? While the current proposition certainly makes the rolls faster, it makes the calculations behind the rolls obscure and arcane if you start throwing in "special" rules for defaulting to an attribute or making the attribute an applied ratio to the total roll rather than a simple addition. I can see a "hidden" threshold increase to make the skill check more difficult if one is defaulting solely to an attribute, but that doesn't compensate for the Skill 1 + Attribute 6 vs. Skill 6 + Attribute 1 problem.

Honestly, we're just going to need a lot more information before anyone "buys" into the mechanic. The "just trust us" "wait and see" and "it's good, you just don't know it" lines are wearing thin, and are being drowned in the hot reactions and attempts at damage control. I know it is difficult with the NDAs for Synner and Patrick Goodman, and I think that if the development blog started posting some more details, it would make their efforts much easier. One of the things that smoothed over the transition between the editions in the-game-that-will-not-be-named was the regular articles on the WotC website showing full details of what has changed in specific mechanics of the game, along with a regular schedule of released articles. For example, they did an article a week on each character class and showed what has changed, what hasn't changed, etc.

Right now, all that I'm seeing is that the game that I know and love to play is being turned into a different game with a foreign game mechanic, and it's being passed off as the same game (or rather, the same setting, with a "better" mechanic). Okay, maybe that's not ALL that I'm seeing, but it would be helpful if someone posted SOME mechanics that remains relatively the same. Something like Cyberware implantation rules and Essence (if that has changed drastically, I'd be very surprised).
Adam
Larger articles / samples of the game are in the plans for closer to the release date, absolutely.
mfb
jesus, adam, i was expecting class descriptions and experience point tables laid out by the third update. you guys are so slow!
Krazy
Now, I'm wondering will this system leave some tasks simply impossible for some chars? I liked the the fact that with SR3 anything was possible, but if the task requires six hits and you only have a max of five dice to throw..... or am I missing something?
GunnerJ
QUOTE (Krazy)
Now, I'm wondering will this system leave some tasks simply impossible for some chars? I liked the the fact that with SR3 anything was possible, but if the task requires six hits and you only have a max of five dice to throw..... or am I missing something?

SR3 has an analogous situation: if the base TN for a test is 8 or more, you cannot attempt it on a default.
Kagetenshi
But the above is impossible even with Attribute 3 and Skill 2.

~J
hahnsoo
QUOTE (Adam)
Larger articles / samples of the game are in the plans for closer to the release date, absolutely.

And I'm saying that right now, at this moment, it's not enough. There's a difference between reassuring your established fanbase and building up hype. Releasing bigger and better information close to the release date is part of building up the hype, but it does nothing for the current situation, in which the established fanbase is seeing that indeed, Shadowrun is being turned into World of Darkness. Whether or not this is ACTUALLY true is irrelevant... this is the current perception and it is distressing for many people. I think most of the current fanbase would like to see Work-in-Progress things, things that aren't finalized, situations that the playtesters are looking at, etc. "We'll release more information later" simply is "wait and see" reworded.

Even a sample Shadowrun adventure in the 2070s with most of the mechanics removed would be helpful. What in the heck are the playtesters playtesting if they aren't "running" Shadowrun?
Krazy
Never could figure out that rule, I always assumed that if a person wanted to try something they were gonna try, although if the unmodified TN was above 8 I may tell them that they have no idea where to start.
My point was that even a character with a small skill can have a chance at succseeding (I tend to give characters only an indication of TN like "simple", to "you think it's nearly immpossible" to get PC's to react instead of doing math) or will the new system mean I just tell the player, you can't. not too realistic, cuz I never know what I can't do untill the dust settles.
Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (hahnsoo @ Apr 5 2005, 08:20 PM)
What in the heck are the playtesters playtesting if they aren't "running" Shadowrun?

We're running our campaigns, or subsets of same, with the new rules to see how they work in a real-world setting. We're asked to look at certain things along the way. "Create a variety of characters with the new chargen system and see where the cracks are" is an approximate translation of one of the requests we've received, as is "Here's the initiative system we're looking at right now; here are three variations. Run a few fights and see which one works sest for you."

For the most part, though, the best way to test a system is to play it, and that's what we're doing. We're playing the game.

Idle curiosity compels me to ask: What the heck did you think we were doing?
Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator)
Patrick Goodman: I remain confident it has also occured to many of you that a QUI-8 night one with Pistols-1 shouldn't really be equal to a QUI-3 human with Pistols-6. Whether something can really be done about such oddities under the system is another matter, and I won't be terribly upset if the answer is "no".

Yeah, that's also occurred to a few of us, at least at the playtest level, and I know some of us are looking at ways to balance that out. I don't know how well it will work out, but I did want to let you know that it has come up in discussion.
hahnsoo
QUOTE (Patrick Goodman @ Apr 5 2005, 08:26 PM)
Idle curiosity compels me to ask: What the heck did you think we were doing?

At the moment, working as damage control while being handcuffed by an NDA that restricts your ability to actually do any good. *grin*

Maybe you can fill my request: Write some brief synopses of your shadowrun campaign sessions. I do this for every game that I play/GM, and it only takes about 15 minutes. You don't have to include too many details, just reassure us that you are actually playing shadowrun, using the new mechanics, instead of monkeying around with isolated mechanics. It isn't as useful if you aren't running in 2070 (this means you are simply transplanting mechanics instead of actually playtesting SR4), but I think it would be helpful.
Vuron
QUOTE (Patrick Goodman)
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator @ Apr 5 2005, 06:10 AM)
Patrick Goodman: I remain confident it has also occured to many of you that a QUI-8 night one with Pistols-1 shouldn't really be equal to a QUI-3 human with Pistols-6. Whether something can really be done about such oddities under the system is another matter, and I won't be terribly upset if the answer is "no".

Yeah, that's also occurred to a few of us, at least at the playtest level, and I know some of us are looking at ways to balance that out. I don't know how well it will work out, but I did want to let you know that it has come up in discussion.

It's an inherent problem with dice pool systems that use attribute + skills. Either you need to balance it in creation and advancement phases by making high attribute totals exponentially more than high skill totals or by making the maximum number of attribute dice rolled linked to some percentage of skills.

Creation based balancing (lets assume a point build based system)

Attribute Build Point Cost
1 1
2 4
3 9
4 16
5 25
6 36
7 49
8 64
9 81
10 100

Skill Build Point Cost
1 1
2 3
3 6
4 10
5 15
6 21
7 28
8 36
9 45
10 55

That way mid range of attributes is much more expensive than skills at the same level and that making significant improvements to attributes definitely stiffles character advancement. This would also encourage characters to have a broad foundation rather than specialization as excessive specialization is far less cost effective in the long term.

The other way of doing it would be to limit the amount of talent (attributes) that an be applied to a given task. Thus you could have a formula where maximum attribute dice for any given test is no greater than skill dice + 2. That way you have incentive to build up skill totals to unlock your full potential.

Personally there are benefits conceptually to either solution it's just that the former tends to place all the bookkeeping at creation and advancement and to simplify gameplay.

Ellery
Actually, with the progressions you've listed, skill costs are pretty close to half of attribute costs, except right at the beginning. What you've listed is attribute cost = a^2, where a is the value of the desired attribute, and skill cost = 1/2 * s^2 + s, which is sometimes called the "triangle progression".

My point is that the distribution doesn't do anything super-special in the "mid range". It starts out with the two fairly close, and goes for mid range and large range and huge range into attributes costing about double of what stats do.

Also, with respect to damage control vs. hype, I tend to agree with the damage control people. We're getting enough information to get worried, and not enough to be reassured. It's more like anti-hype right now, for me. Fixing that on a PR level is easy...give a bit more information to show that the major concerns will work out, or at least demonstrate that the problems are understood and being worked on. Yeah, so maybe something will be announced that later has to be changed. This is not the end of the world; it just shows that you're thinking.
SykoBear
Just a suggestion since I don't feel particularly deconstructive today.

How about (1/2 attribute) + (skill) as a dice pool? That way, attributes are important for versatility, skills are important for speciallisation?

That might require reworking of the 1-6 scale on both ends though.
Vuron
QUOTE (Ellery)
Actually, with the progressions you've listed, skill costs are pretty close to half of attribute costs, except right at the beginning. What you've listed is attribute cost = a^2, where a is the value of the desired attribute, and skill cost = 1/2 * s^2 + s, which is sometimes called the "triangle progression".

My point is that the distribution doesn't do anything super-special in the "mid range". It starts out with the two fairly close, and goes for mid range and large range and huge range into attributes costing about double of what stats do.

Also, with respect to damage control vs. hype, I tend to agree with the damage control people. We're getting enough information to get worried, and not enough to be reassured. It's more like anti-hype right now, for me. Fixing that on a PR level is easy...give a bit more information to show that the major concerns will work out, or at least demonstrate that the problems are understood and being worked on. Yeah, so maybe something will be announced that later has to be changed. This is not the end of the world; it just shows that you're thinking.

My goal was pretty much to encourage characters towards having attributes and skills roughly equal in the 3-5 range with high skills becoming more advantageous cost wise towards higher levels of development.

Thus characters will tend to try to have thier primary skill = attribute combos in the 8-9 dice range with thier secondary skill combos in the 6-7 dice range and thier tertiary skill combos in the 3-4 range. That way you have on average 3 successes with primary combos 2 with secondary and 1 success with tertiary areas of concern. Assuming that difficulties will be largely determined by numbers of success having plateaus like that tend to work well.

Fundamentally it makes the occurances of 8 attribute 1 skill and 1 attribute 8 skill extremely rare and 4 attribute 5 skill by far the most likely occurance.
Patrick Goodman
QUOTE (hahnsoo)
Maybe you can fill my request: Write some brief synopses of your shadowrun campaign sessions. I do this for every game that I play/GM, and it only takes about 15 minutes. You don't have to include too many details, just reassure us that you are actually playing shadowrun, using the new mechanics, instead of monkeying around with isolated mechanics. It isn't as useful if you aren't running in 2070 (this means you are simply transplanting mechanics instead of actually playtesting SR4), but I think it would be helpful.

I'll see what I can do, but I'll warn you right now that I'm getting married in a little more than 5 weeks, and two of my players are in school right now preparing for this semester's finals and other exams leading up to same. We do good to get our games in (and I really should be doing something else besides posting here and taking abuse for those posts from some of the people who hang out here).

If I get the chance to synopsize the games, though, I'll post them to my playtest blog.
Adam
Yeah, shut the heck up and playtest nonstop until you get hitched. Jesus. PRIORITIES! wink.gif
Vuron
QUOTE (Adam)
Yeah, shut the heck up and playtest nonstop until you get hitched. Jesus. PRIORITIES! wink.gif

I think it's supposed to have decades to ruin your relationship with your fiancee you only have x amount of time to have 4e SR not be ruined wink.gif
kackling kactuar
QUOTE (Krazy)
Never could figure out that rule, I always assumed that if a person wanted to try something they were gonna try, although if the unmodified TN was above 8 I may tell them that they have no idea where to start.
My point was that even a character with a small skill can have a chance at succseeding (I tend to give characters only an indication of TN like "simple", to "you think it's nearly immpossible" to get PC's to react instead of doing math)  or will the new system mean I just tell the player, you can't. not too realistic, cuz I never know what I can't do untill the dust settles.

Ditto. One of the best things about the current system is that there's a chance, no matter how slim, for a PC to succeed in anything as long as they have at least 1 point invested in the appropriate skill. Getting rid of this aspect of the system would also get rid of all those cool gaming moments when your character rolls a 56 and pulls off the impossible stunt that yanks the rest of the team back from the brink of a total party wipeout.
Vuron
QUOTE (kackling kactuar)
QUOTE (Krazy)
Never could figure out that rule, I always assumed that if a person wanted to try something they were gonna try, although if the unmodified TN was above 8 I may tell them that they have no idea where to start.
My point was that even a character with a small skill can have a chance at succseeding (I tend to give characters only an indication of TN like "simple", to "you think it's nearly immpossible" to get PC's to react instead of doing math)  or will the new system mean I just tell the player, you can't. not too realistic, cuz I never know what I can't do untill the dust settles.

Ditto. One of the best things about the current system is that there's a chance, no matter how slim, for a PC to succeed in anything as long as they have at least 1 point invested in the appropriate skill. Getting rid of this aspect of the system would also get rid of all those cool gaming moments when your character rolls a 56 and pulls off the impossible stunt that yanks the rest of the team back from the brink of a total party wipeout.

That's why it's good to have systems where characters can earn extra dice through creative storytelling ie instead of I shoot him with my Ares Predator you say I dive sidewise firing both my pistols at the officer as doves fly past us thus earning 2 bonus dice.

I'm not saying that SR will have a stunt system like exalted but the addition of one would allow GMs to create instances where unskilled combatants do outstanding things. Presumably there will still be some karma pool type mechanic where you can reroll or by additional successes etc if you are truly desperate and stunting isn't enough.

Personally I'd much rather outstanding results be the result of outstanding roleplaying instead of outlandish dicerolling.
Pthgar
QUOTE (Vuron)
Personally I'd much rather outstanding results be the result of outstanding roleplaying instead of outlandish dicerolling.

And a more abstract "streamlined" mechanic will require outstanding GMing as far as descriptions translatining what actually happened when the players rolled those dice. It will encourage more RP in the G, I think.
Ellery
Having such a big impact of attributes really encourages a player to take several skills linked to the same attribute which are useful in different areas (e.g. swords, heavy weapons, and projectile weapons) and then max that stat. Even with square vs. triangle progressions, you're better off raising an attribute from 5 to 6 than raising three skills from 4 to 5.
Penta
Thank you, Patrick.

In my case, let me explain where I'm coming from w/ SR:

I play, these days, almost exclusively on a MUSH.

That has disadvantages, in that I don't get a lot of the atmosphere and the implicit signals of a tabletop group.

However, it does have advantages, as Commiekeebler and others can attest.

One, it forces you to become intimately knowledgable with the canon ruleset. With 1500 possible players, you can't really do house rules.

Two, you can see where the system breaks. Yes, MUSHes tend to wind up with karma levels in excess of anything that might be achieved in a regular group. That's the nature of persistent play running (in the case of the oldest MUSH, the one I play on) for over 10 years, continuously, with no resets of the overall playerbase.

However, we also see where things go bad.

Combat in SR leads to TimeStops, the mechanism by which "real time" (the normal nature for roleplay, with 1 second in realtime equaling 1 second in gametime) becomes the timescale used in combat, being known unofficially as "TimeStucks".

A *simple* barfight can last 4-6 hours.

This is continuous time, with everybody at the keyboard.

This is even *with* things like dice-rolling being computerized.

What would be very useful would be utilities to speed up things like Combat, released in a form easily used standalone and by MUSHes.
Shockwave_IIc
Not really sure if it's relavent but i'd like to point to my post on page 2, where i kinda suggest a balancer. Now If i can come up with something to stop rampant Attribute score in all of 5 mins then im sure the Dev team can as well.
fistandantilus4.0
QUOTE (Vuron)
Getting rid of this aspect of the system would also get rid of all those cool gaming moments when your character rolls a 56 and pulls off the impossible stunt that yanks the rest of the team back from the brink of a total party wipeout. [/QUOTE]
That's why it's good to have systems where characters can earn extra dice through creative storytelling ie instead of I shoot him with my Ares Predator you say I dive sidewise firing both my pistols at the officer as doves fly past us thus earning 2 bonus dice.

.

Almost that exact thing happened in the last game I ran, except it was a 42, down the barrel of an HMG to jam it. And the doves....well.. they were there, seriously. But they kinda got shot in the cross fire.
Ever seen that picture of the pitcher hitting the bird with the ball? Like that, but messier.
mfb
i think--and this idea has, i recall, already been presented--that the best way to handle the problem of stats becoming all-important is to use the same rule that's currently used in SR3: no more dice may be added to a skill roll than the character has points in that skill. if you've got Qui 6 and Pistols 4, you roll 8 dice (4 from Qui, 4 from Pistols); if you raise your Pistols to 6, you roll 12. this makes attributes important, makes high attributes worth having, but doesn't make attributes more important than skills.
Fortune
QUOTE (mfb)
i think--and this idea has, i recall, already been presented--that the best way to handle the problem of stats becoming all-important is to use the same rule that's currently used in SR3: no more dice may be added to a skill roll than the character has points in that skill.

I think this is probably the best solution so far.
Dizzo Dizzman
Yes, I also think this solution is both simple and effective.
kackling kactuar
QUOTE
Personally I'd much rather outstanding results be the result of outstanding roleplaying instead of outlandish dicerolling.

What if your roleplay is consistently outstanding? Should it then be up to the GM to decide when you live and when you die?
Wounded Ronin
No matter how impassioned and quirky I am when someone is shooting me in the brain, I'm still dead.
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (kackling kactuar)
Should it then be up to the GM to decide when you live and when you die?

Is it never not up to the GM when a character lives or dies?
kackling kactuar
QUOTE (RunnerPaul)
Is it never not up to the GM when a character lives or dies?

Well, it really depends on the GM. Me, I'll rather he/she not play God and let the dice fall where they may. The way I see it, having the GM intervene to save your character from the jaws of death completely kills the sense of danger and irrational randomness that makes the game fun.
Kagetenshi
Tsk, tsk, you underestimate us GMs. Deciding whether a character lives or dies can involve many things like pool allocation, skill levels, number and presence of reinforcements, cowardice from the opposition, all of those things. It's definitely debatable whether it should happen, but please don't assume you'll always see it happening.

~J
kackling kactuar
Sure, the GM can set up the situation, but he should never mess with the dice rolls.

Besides, it's kinda hard to miss the GM's intentions when he suddenly gives you twenty extra dice for your resistance roll right before the grenade lands on your crotch.
Kagetenshi
But would it be quite so obvious if the grenade type hasn't been mentioned and it turns out to be a concussion grenade?

~J
RunnerPaul
Or if your character woke up in some corporate hospital somewhere, recovering from the grenade rules while some creepy company man starts telling the runner that "You've been very bad, but we may have a chance for you to make ammends."
kackling kactuar
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
But would it be quite so obvious if the grenade type hasn't been mentioned and it turns out to be a concussion grenade?

But then you can't brag to your friends about how you're such a man that you survived an offensive grenade blast to the crotch, which brings me back to my original point.
Kagetenshi
Unless you're a heavily cybered troll you generally can't brag about that anyway…

Either way, seems like someone who went through that wouldn't be a man anymore, if you take my meaning.

~J
kackling kactuar
Untrue. With a good street doctor and a fat wallet, one can turn that setback into an advantage and become even more of a man than before.
Kagetenshi
"There's not much point in texhnolyzing that part of the body"
"The women might like it better, what with all the jerky motion"

~J
Vuron
I fail to see how a runner should brag about being the recipient of insanely good luck. Let's face it if you need some ungodly TN to survive you weren't doing your homework in the first place.

Further insane rolls can also currently hurt runners such as when a snot nosed punk pulls off some deadly attack on the runner that by all rights he shouldn't be able to touch.

Fundamentally it comes down to whether or not you want dice roles to determine the course of the action rather than having the dice be secondary to the action. The current method of exploding dice and extremely high TNs tends to discourage new gamers from picking up the game where as a slightly easier mechanic could be beneficial towards growing the game long term.
Kagetenshi
I'm going to disagree both with the assertion and with the reasoning there.

~J
mfb
so, what, the GM is never allowed to throw in a curveball that the PC didn't see coming? plans are never allowed to go sour, or the players aren't doing it right? that sounds kinda boring, man. not to mention unlikely.
Critias
QUOTE (Vuron)
I fail to see how a runner should brag about being the recipient of insanely good luck. Let's face it if you need some ungodly TN to survive you weren't doing your homework in the first place.

Oh, right. Another one of those "if you ever have to fire a single shot, you're a bad Shadowrunner" guys. Okay.
Kagetenshi
If you leave a single guard alive, you're a bad Shadowrunner.

~J
FrostyNSO
I always liked that a street punk could knock off a badass SR with a lucky shot.
hobgoblin
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
If you leave a single guard alive, you're a bad Shadowrunner.

~J

make that, if you leave the building standing your a bad shadowrunner and ill agree rotfl.gif
DrJest
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
If you leave a single guard alive, you're a bad Shadowrunner.

Don't get torzzz started smile.gif our shamen have already been arguing over the lack of necessity for innocent deaths biggrin.gif

"Brindell, get those techs out of there."
"Why?"
"Because if you don't, when we trash the power lines they'll get fried."
"So?"

Blasted Cat shamen and their streaks of cruelty nyahnyah.gif
Vuron
No I'm not saying that combat isn't an important part of the game but that desperately rolling the bucket of dice for the off chance that you might be able to make that TN 50 roll isn't exactly what I would consider a good choice or situation for the shadowrunner.

If it's the thrill of making insane rolls then if the new system is based on numbers of success then thrill when you roll all sixes with 12 dice or some other massively unlikely event.

I just fail to see why DS people are so adamant that exploding dice and no upper limit TNs is the way to go with SR4.
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