Shadowrun is creepy, dark, and gritty now?

Crap. I'd better load my weighted-barrel Ares Alpha loaded with EX-EX quick! Every turn I wait is four creepy, dark, gritty mooks that I don't kill.

First off: any time you use the phrase "you people", you lose the internet. I remember in that old "Grenade Countermeasures" I said that you were usually an ass, and you acted all surprised. Glad to see you've not changed!

Second off... the fact that no one else pointed out that your criticism is not only unfounded, but completely bizarre, likely means that you've voiced it many, many times and they're just sick of it. If not... hey, you're not even inflammatory anymore.

Regardless, that's easily the lamest critique of any system concept I've ever heard. Stating it with more oomph will not make it more true.

-Albert
sr4 is exalted lol

What, you don't think living in a world with vampires and magic, where you're likely to be manipulated by great dragons or rich, power-hungry corpers into dying for their benefit, would be creepy at all? I think it is.

Still, you're right that a typical SR campaign goes easy on the creepyness, certainly a lot less than a WoD for mortals campaign. But SR is still typically on the darker and grittier side of gaming. In what other game do you play mercenary criminal terrorists?

D&D?

"Criminal terrorists" pretty much describes the average RPG party. It's just that most RPGs allow you to fund yourself through improbable means, whereas Shadowrun concedes that sponsorship is required for roving massacre to be a sustainable career. Hence "mercenary", so you've got a point there.

Still... "the King has summoned the five of you to his chambers..."

-Albert

Hopefully not his bedchambers unless you are all playing females. Otherwise, ewwww....

I wouldn't mind being summoned by the Queen however(Princess, maybe ).

In SR, of course, you're much more likely to be used for summoning the Queen.

Umm, that's a different kind of "roleplaying", and it's usually not done in groups, unless you are a swinger.

Well, you can kinda wing it with the rules in the corebook, but it'll be unsatisfying until you buy The Swinger's Black Book, which gives a whole bunch of new manuevers and really "fleshes it out," so to speak.

-Albert

Edit: I'd like to point out that Dumpshock claims that I replied to your post about 23 hours before you made it. GG invision!

honestly, i have no idea. i've only run SR on tabletop once, and played it on tabletop even less than that (nonce!)

What this says is that the balance between Attributes and Skills is also being adjusted as is the framework they operate under. The system will likely put a stop to the current SR3 situation where dozens of shadowrunners are running around with not one but several Attributes on par with the racial maximum (think about how wrong that is). I won't even get into the skills situation where a shadowrunner often develops better ratings than an off-the-shelf specialist scientist who's exclusively dedicated to a particular field/skill. This is a long standing gripe I've had with SR3 and the move will partially correct this by providing a framework.

Note that the FAQ only specifically mentions limits on character creation but hasn't yet addressed progression costs/curves in game - I fully expect to see Att increases to be proportionately more expensive given their impact on the new Dice Pools.

If the average attribute is 3, it makes me wonder what the racial modifyers are gonna be cos if you tack +4 str for a troll on that they're gonna be sick.

Does anyone know if they'll be toning it down.

I rekon they prob be +3 bod and +2 str, troll that is, can work everything else out from that.

This is incorrect - on average you will be throwing around exactly the same number of dice (possibly more in technical skills) for the very same tests so despite the change in the probability curve it still evens out.

What's changed is the frame of reference - its just wrong that the average unenhanced SR3 character is on par with Carl Lewis, Charles Atlas and Einstein (assuming those maxed out the human racial maximum of 6 at their prime) out of the box. Take a look at the archetypes.

The issue isn't about being exceptionally talented and shining in your field of choice, its being overly talented and gifted across the board - especially when it comes multiple characters in a team having multiple Attributes at racial maximum (not saying that won't be possible in SR4 just that the reference framework will necessarily have to be revised). Those aren't shadowrunners, they're supersoldiers.

There's no reason you can't have a secret test count; you don't have to tell the player how many hits/successes he needs to succeed at a given task.

It plays rather well, though there is a learning curve.

The average attribute was 3 even in SR3. If that didn't make trolls sick in SR3, I doubt it'll make them sick in SR4. Anyway, 2.8-meter tall, 400+kg bone-encrusted giants ought to be sick.

Only with the help with ware or magic. After all, going from an unmodified attr of 6 to 9 costs a whopping 72 Karma for a human. And in SR3 (post-Companion), the supergeniuses are more likely to have an Int of 11. Likewise I've always thought that a specialist scientist dedicated to a particular field might well have 2-digit skills related to that field -- considering relative karma costs, that seems logical.

If the problem is lots of new characters having all attributes and skills at either 6 or nothing, then what needs to be (and I assume is very much being) tweaked is chargen. No such problem with BeCKS, though I can see how such a system would go totally against the apparent goal of simpler rules.

There are safeguards against maxing out stats at chargen built into the system. Some of these thoughts have, in fact, occurred to the designers.

Beg pardon? Is the Racial Modified Limit-Racial Maximum system being removed, with what used to be RMLs now being RMaxes for all races in SR4?

In SR3, I rather give at least Carl Lewis and possibly also Einstein one or more 2-digit attributes and skills.

No offense meant, but that still means a human, quickness 3 and pistols 3, is as effective a shooter as a night one (quickness 3 + 3) with no pistols stkill, and I find that really extreme and unrealistic.

Well, the FAQ does say that the Attribute maximum is 6 (plus racial bonuses, if any).

{curmudgeon] As a GM, and not a playtester (since this doesn't have anything to do with the new system), it's been my experience over a really hideous number of years that if you're relying on your dice to produce your atmosphere, then you're doing something wrong. That's entirely the province of the guy running the game, not of little cubes of plastic. {/curmudgeon}

We now return you to your previously scheduled discussion.

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.

I didn't read that as them simply ruling out the possibility of a starting character having an unmodified attribute of 6, but more as that being very expensive and perhaps not a profitable choice in the min/max sense. And even if there were a harsh upper limit at chargen, unless it's 3 (which I doubt...), the difference between that and the absolute natural maximum is much, much smaller than in SR3.

I guess that's just a preference question. I know well that a lot of people want the characters in their games to be The Bestest. I don't, really. I rather have them be just well above average people doing amazing things. I realize that this is a personal preference question, and that's why I said it's something that I'll personally house rule -- not something that I think should be changed or anything.

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".

Wow. And I thought I was the only one who posted around here who was familiar with Ironclaw/Jadeclaw's dice mechanic. To this day, out of all the RPG basic dice mechanic variations I've seen, Ironclaw's system is still hands down the one that impresses me the most for the smoothness of it's probability curves on both the "stat rating" and "dificulty of task" sides of the equation.

In fact, I've always wanted to adapt Ironclaw's core mechanic for use as a replacement for SR's core mechanic. Depending on what the final details are of SR4's system, I may finally be able to do just that.

Such scales applied to even just to the adult population of a Western country are bound to fail. For example, based on the rules, an attribute of 1 basically means you're disabled (show me a healthy adult human who can carry only 10kg of stuff before he wears out), so those must be very rare, which basically forces you to have a bucketload of people who are sub-par in most ways (2s accross the table).

For SR3, my statistical attribute table looked roughly like this: 1-1.5%, 2-13.5%, 3-35%, 4-30%, 5-14%, 6-5%, 7-0.55%, 8-0.25%, 9-0.125%, 10-0.05%, 11-0.025%. With these figures, the attribute mean is 3.6125. It's not, of course, an exact science, since the GM is not required to stat out the whole of humanity, but I tried to keep this in mind when creating NPCs.

Well, one could say that an Attribute of 1 is either physically handicapped or mentally handicapped.

1 is just one step up from "I'm a vegetable!"

Sure. I'm a fan, I worry. If it's being adressed, great.

And since you're much more in the know about the new mechanic, could you please answer a simple, and egneral question: what is more important in determining success chances (dice pools, as it looks): skill, or attribute? Will low skills still be worse off than a high default attribute? Will the lowered average skill mean there'll be generally higher costs of rising in any skill and learning it above 3 than in SR3? Those learning tests already are tedious.

Yeah.

But the point I was making was you now add that to a skill when you roll.
That just might tip the balance a bit.

By the way i'm not just moaning that trolls are unfair as most of my chars are trolls. Troll rigger(Hacker), Troll decker(Hacker), Troll mage, Troll Shamen you name it i'll build it as a troll.

Anyway in nWOD.
Str + brawl = attack in melee.
Troll Str 8 + brawl 4 vs Human Str 4 brawl 6.
The human shold have the advantage, brawl 6 vs 4, if brawl 3 is average. But the troll has.

Yeah I know this assumes a lot but it the best example I could come up with without research.

If the only difference between the troll and the human in this case were the STR attribute, I'd agree. In SR this isn't the case. Sure the BOD and Reach bonuses also help (in SR3 anyway), but in the end it's often the case that amount of dice you get to roll is the only thing that really matters. If trolls finally get to completely annihilate humans in unarmed combat, I'll just be happy.

You say that like it's a bad thing...

well there are some old classics in there that i wonder how will end up after the changes.

I hope that the FAQ people listened to that, because I think it's absolutely right.

My kneejerk reaction to the new system was "Well, I guess I'll just be using SR4 books for setting info." After a bit of thought I've calmed down immensely and I'm back to cautiously optimistic provided that there are adequate balances in place to keep skills more important than attributes. A defaulting penalty is a good step, but hopefully there will be something in place to keep QUI 6 Pistols 3 Guy a noticeably worse shooter than QUI 3 Pistols 6 Guy. One of the things I've always liked about SR was the importance of skills and the fact that knowing how to do something is better than having raw strength or speed.

And Patrick, we know you guys are trying to do good, but I don't think you can blame us for reacting to limited information when it's all you'll give us. We can't react to the stuff you haven't told us yet.

Edit: On second thought, most of us can't react to the stuff you haven't told us yet. Some of us actually seem to be very good at it.

So SR is going to become "everybody wears black, wears makeup, and has rampant teen-angst?"

that'll go well with the skirt-wearing crowd!