i have to agree with backgammon. the three updates so far have focused on what's changing--probably because that's what people are asking about most. what we're asking now, is, what's staying the same? what is there, in the new system, that makes it SRish?

Some quick number crunching
6 dice
16000 tosses (that's a 2% stand dev. approx.)

1 or more hits 91.213%
2 or more hits 64.644%
3 or more hits 32.169%
4 or more hits 10.294%
5 or more hits 1.819%
6 of 6 hits 0.150%

Formula used (in excel)
6 colums of randbwetween(1,6) 7th colum count colums 1 through 6, if they are >4 then, I counted from that colum if greater than 0 (1 or more hits), 2, etc.
Should give an idea of how easily an avergae person will fair in accomplishing somethign based on hits

Any dicepool system of attribute + skill rating with fixed TNs is going to resemble exalted/aeonverse. Just like storyteller was initially seen as a variant of SR's dicepool mechanics.

Some concerns
Hopefully they don't use botches on 1s or multiple successes for 6s(d6 is just to small of a dice for those to function well)
Hopefully environmental +/- to dicepools aren't too extreme or common

Assuming that 6d6 is the average roll for the average person then 2 successes is a decent average. I assume that that one success will be enough for a routine task and that the additional success will stage for effect.

So shooting someone 10 meters away might be a 1 success test, while shooting them while you are jogging and in poor visibility might be a 3 success test and shooting the pistol out of thier hand while you are running full speed and in total darkness might be a 5 success test.

I would assume that any number of successes beyond the base get applied towards staging the target.

Nikoli: I tried that with 50000 rows of 6 columns each, so that it did all the math at the same time (the same table had all the calculations down to the probability for each outcome), and stupid Excel crashed.

the more is read the less i like it. its no longer shadowrun, its a bastard child of shadowrun and wod pretending to be its father...

see, okay. someone explain to me why X is bad solely because it was used by Y first? i gives one entire damn about who used the dN vs fixed TN Q first. what matters is whether or not it works well.

emphasis on "was". most people are very pleased with the Aeon rules, which are what the "new" WoD uses.

I have to agree this evolving FAQ has me worried. I jumped into SR at the end of SR1 but really got into it at the beginning of SR2. I vaguely remember damage codes such as 5M3 and stuff like that, but it was simplified to 2 successes stage down in SR2. I thought streamlines like that were rad.

Fast forward on the day SR3 came out and I bought my book. I read through it and see that they reworked the magic rules to fit more closely with the core rules. Once again, that was a rad streamline (forgive my vernacular, I did most of my growing up in the 80s). Now that rigging and decking rules have evolved into his weblike behemoth I will admit I stay away from them, and that's my option as a player and a GM. So I hear SR4 is coming out, once again I think, "rad!" because I'm hoping they'll do to Rigging and Decking what they did to Magic in the change to 3rd Edition, streamline the rules to make them fit in with the core ones.

Well, now I'm hearing whisperings that the old system I know and love is somewhat caput, and has been replaced by either a complete copy or slightly modified version of the new WoD rules. That really bugs me. I'll admit I haven't played the new WoD, only the old version, which is what drove me away from the game. I loved the setting, I thought it was brilliant, but I hated the system. So I can see why FanPro is trying to appeal to those types of players, but one of the big reasons I play SR is because the rules are like nothing else I've played. Its their uniqueness and ability to at least give me a shot, no matter how slim it is, is what I loved.

The highest TN I can think of that I rolled against was something like a 20, and I remember the look on my GM's face when I rolled that 23 on the Int test. After a heartbeat he said, "fuck!" because now he had to actually give me info that he didn't bother thinking up because he never figured anyone would ever roll that high when they needed to. It seems like those days might be numbered because I'm hearing that the impossible TNs and open ended sixes are dead. Very sad. I loved that chance we once had. So who knows about this new system. I'll probably buy a BBB to see what has changed, but if I read through it and find that these current whisperings have turned into canonical shouts then I'm gonna remain an SR3 player for life.

So if FanPro kills part of what I feel makes Shadowrun the Shadowrun I love, then so be it, I'll stick with the old FASA days and FASA rules. You can call my viewpoint flawed, wrong, or childish, that's your prerogative, but I feel like FanPro is making a trade...trading new players for the old salty dog ones who are too set in their ways to keep with the march of "progress". Make your trade, FanPro. I hope it brings you much success.

Okay I didn't want to do math today but here it is

Since the chances of any one dice being a success is 33% the probability of getting 1 success out of any number of dice can be derived with the following formula.

1 - (0.67 ^ N) where N is the number of dice rolled

So a quick chart

Dice Rolled Chance of 1 Success
1 die 33%
2 die 44%
3 die 70%
4 die 80%
5 die 87%
6 die 91%
7 die 94%
8 die 96%
9 die 98%
10 die 98%

So there is a point of diminishing returns having much above 6 dice in your pool if you are looking for 1 success.

If I can remember how to do binomial expansion I'll do a chart for number of success expected for each number of dice in the pool

I suggest you use the accurate figure (1-(2/3)^N). I already did this (for 1 success, up to 10 dice) closer to the beginning of this thread. Here it is again, with 11-20 added:

Those who are defending the fixed TN systems need to really take a moment to think about how modifiers are applied. Sure, it's easy to say, "now you just roll your N dice and count the X's," but what about when N changes? In Exalted, there are plenty of die penalties which are calculated before the roll. This slows down the game at that point (though you may recapture some of that lost time later). In current SR, there are almost no die penalties, just TN changes.

Shadowrun:
Player rolls N dice. N is determined by skill (or default) plus optional pool use. GM does not add or subtract from N. Before or after this, GM assigns a TN. If there's no pool use, then the player can just roll and wait for the TN. GM's input occurs once.

Exalted/other WW:
GM assigns die penalties. Player, after hearing the die penalties, rolls N - x dice. Player then counts own successes. GM then subtracts minimum success levels and "success penalties" (difficulty) to determine "level of success".

In SR, as things stand, there is one number that gets adjusted for regular success tests -- the TN. The player die roll can take place without wait, it's just the interpretation that takes a moment longer. WW-style has two places where the GM needs to pay attention. As a GM, I don't think that fits with what simplification is supposed to mean.

Admittedly, SR4 may not have die penalties, but that would make it awfully coarse-grained. I personally hate systems where "you must be at least this high" to have any chance of success.

I wonder if Adpets and Mages are going to have disciplines, oops, I mean traditions, uh, tribes.

It will be hard for them to tell us what mechanics arn't changing... since they are creating a whole new ruleset.

Let me add a positive voice to this thread. I don't feel that the information provided so far has anything in common with WoD or nWoD. Or Aeon for that matter. The most one can say is that the system is skill+attribute which describes a lot of RPG's.

My group and I are the exact people that FanPro is targeting with SR4. We played SR 1, 2, and 3 and eventually quit due to the rules. IMO there are two major problems with SR3. One, players have a hard time being introduced to the game due to the near overwhelming complexity of the system. And two, GM's hated to run the game due to the overwhelming complexity.

Sure you can say that the complexity of SR was a part of the game but in order to get my gaming group back to SR it needs to be simplified some. Some mind you. My favorite part of SR has always been the magic system.

If FanPro cleans up the system maybe they would even have something that would make a good core system. The main problem I had with Earthdawn was the fact that they didn't use the SR mechanics.

these new rules further favor magically active characters, namely adepts.

If nothing else changes adept will be like street sams butter better. I mean that as in adepts will still roll more dice the samies. Right now that is alright, having more dice is a nice trick but not the end all of power. When you give flat Tns, having more dice is the be all and end all.

And don't even get me started about metas. Really, if nothing else changes then I would really have to think about playing a human.

Some more probability stuff. I worte a program that "rolls" some "dice" and then averages the successes. This is the output; it lists the average successes one can expect from the stated number of dice given the stated number of rolls of that many dice.

Excellent chart I was pretty certain my 3 dice buys you one success wasn't entirely correct but was close enough for quesstimates. Of course we don't know if the system is one predicated on multiple successes being needed for harder tasks or if it just has huge numbers of situational modifiers that often reduce the number of dice rolled.

Personally I find systems where more successes needed for harder tasks to be easier to adjudicate than remembering all the damned conditional modifiers and I generally feel they are more elegant than reducing dice pools but that's just my personal preference.

Overall it does predicate a significant change in a variety of structures but so as to make updating characters a scary proposition at best but I'd be content to just have a simple easy to use system.

Printing times, from the time the files are sent to the printer, to the time the books ship out, are as little as 10 days now. Couple that with overnight shipping [or two day shipping if the book is printed overseas] and it's still under two weeks.

Uh, the devs are FanPro.

It's like, at most, 5 people I think?

FanPro LLC has an exceptionally lean full/part-time staff; almost everyone works on a freelance basis. FanPro certainly doesn't have 5 full-timers on salary.

In any given system excess complexity creates an inherent learning curve that can keep a system from gaining new adherents. The simple fact of the matter is that within a niche marketplace like tabletop roleplaying being an "advanced" rpg that requires more knowledge to get into automatically limits your user base. If we want more products to come out (assuming most people can find some utility in products if only for the fluff content) we need to realize that in order to compete SR needs to have mechanics at least comparible difficult to understand as other leading systems.

Yes we are almost certainly going to see dice pools that can exceed 10 dice and changing the base mechanics to attribute + skill does require a lot of changes in how skills and attributes are determined.

Personally I tend to like the Silcore mechanics: Dice pool equal to skill rating + attribute modifiers (often between +/- 2) but that's just me. The key thing with an attribute + skill system is that with most of the systems that have gone with that mechanic have had attributes end up dramatically overpowering the effects of high skills. For example even with 9 attributes in the various storyteller variants there are far more skills than attributes so it is preferable to focus your development on attributes unless skill advancement is significantly cheaper than attribute advancement.

One way I'd balance the equation is to make attribute advancement via karma exponential so raising a stat from average (3) to (4) would cost 16 karma or something like that whereas skill advancement would work similar to the existing system. Further attribute adds from race, cyberware, adept powers, etc would likey be signficantly toned down as a troll with 10 strength could basically automatically succeed at strength based tests etc. I would expect that attribute adds become more on the line of +/- 1 for good attributes (Orc Body/Strength Elf Charisma) and +/- 2 for truly exceptional attributes (Troll Body/Strength). Cyberware stat adders would almost certainly be toned down (or else not add to rolls).

It's not a bad basis for a system altogether and I'm interested in knowing more of the mechanics as they get released (as mechanics are generally not copyrightable there is no incentive not to have the general mechanics released).

Further concurrance to the abysmally small sizes of most gaming companies. The number of companies that can afford to have a staff in the high single digits are extremely rare and the tendency is for most to have 1 or 2 employees that generally have other employment. For the most part tabletop gaming has never been and never will be a money making venture. Factor in time put in on average for each product and most writers might be averaging minimum wage.

I'm not saying that we should start paying game designers 6 figures as obviously market forces tend to dictate the going rate etc but that assuming that any product line can afford massive staffing is simply not the case.

I dunno, I imagine WotC having a good staff

WotC is an exception to just about every game company rule.

When dealing with companies that make strictly RPGs [with perhaps a side foray into a card game or two], I can't think of an active company in the industry that has more than 30 full-time staff members [White Wolf might, actually], and most are 5 or under.

*cough*

I was laid off from Guardians of Order last December.

We had 5 employees before the layoffs -- President, two production staff, two line developers, plus a part time office assistant.

That was one of the primary reasons for the GoO layoffs, yes.

Well, let me just chime in to say that I'm quite excited with the changes I've been seeing in SR4. And I've been playing (off and on) since SR1.

Am I nervous? Sure. But I'm also quite pleased with most of what I've read. It's going to change some of the feel of SR, but I think in the end it'll be for the better.

And yes, I like the nWoD dice mechanics, so this doesn't bother me much.

I'll add in two things here...

1) Design was begun on SR4 before nWoD came out, so the similarities are fairly coincidental.

2) WotC is owned by Hasbro, which ius a company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

WotC is an exception for a reason. They're by far the number one selling game company in the world thanks to Magic and D&D, and they have a cash giant behind them. And even then, as was noted, they've still had several lay offs since the "good ol' days", right around the time of Pokemon and D&D, which is liekly when they were at their largest.

3) Ok, I lied, three things. I'll confirm what Adam and Patrick have said. FanPro is one guy, Rob Boyle. Adam, Rett Kipp, and... I'm blanking on the name, but the main CBT developer, are all pretty much Part Time. There's a couple regular freelancers who do specific things on a job by job basis. That's about it...

Bull

Thanks Patrick. That's the name... I can picture what he looks like, he's a great guy, very cool to hang with at the con, I was just blanking on the name... (I kept coming up with Bryan Nystul, but that was the former Line Dev at FASA).

And Paul, yeah, I know... <shrug> Aeon/Trinity, Abberant, and Adventure all used the core nWoD system, before they became cancer-giving substances

I know that FanPro didn't say "Hey, let's copy this WW game mechanic". If nothing else, FanPro's crew is pretty decent friends with White Wolf's crew (I'm still bummed I missed out on the Dodgeball match at Gen Con ). There may have been a bit of inpiration there, I'm not sure. I wasn't involved in the early stages of design.

And, well, I'll say this. There's a bit more too it than nWoD's core system. How much more, can't say, but... There's more

Bull