But my game panels are cool and look good.

Props are nice. I´m going to think up something similar for the new system.

Obviously the core issue is the debate between simulationist and narrativist roleplaying. The core SR3 system is heavily simulationist (although many people would argue it's simulating some wierd reality rather than the real world) rather than the more narrativist systems that have gained popularity in recent years.

I would venture that it's basically accepted within the industry that narrative roleplaying systems sell better than simulationist roleplaying systems when developing a new game. Yes the biggest seller of all is very simulationist (part of that stems from being a wargame initially) but most of the big sellers in recent years seem to be drifting towards the opposite direction.

Note that I'm not saying that simulationist games are bad it's just that after a while most people don't want to accurately simulate all the variables present in reality and would prefer to play an interesting game. The trick of course is making the system more open and inviting for the narrativist roleplayers without turning off all the simulationist grognards. Ultimately though the question remains would more people want to play Advanced Squad Leader (excellent simulationist game) or nWoD. Based on sales I'd tend to say that going narrativist is a smart idea and it will remain a question whether risking current fans to gain new ones is a smart strategy.

I don't think it's that easy to simply classify a game as simulationist versus narrative. In my experience, it's a rare game that people play both because of the system and because of the setting and feel. Most everyone I know who plays the new World of Darkness system plays it despite the batshit loony manner in which it simulates things, and house rules on certain mechanics are so common that they ought to be drafted into the basic framework. I've seen these mechanical complaints and adjustments even from "narrative" roleplayers, because, if mechanics were unimportant, they'd just go diceless in the first place and play Amber, or something.

What I think should be done is that, if simplicity over accuracy of simulation and depth/flexibility of in-game activity is ultimately decided as a necessary factor to make the game more welcoming to new and inexperienced players, the system at least be built in a way that permits additional functionality, albeit with additional complexity, to be introduced in such a way that it interoperates with the basic rules. Such advanced rules could be packaged in a companion book, and allow those of us who find mechanics to be very important to keep our apparently over-complicated ways of doing things.

D&D 3.5th Edition has the Unearthed Arcana supplement, and both second and third edition Shadowrun have employed a Shadowrun Companion for the introduction of advanced systems that permit people to do things that they might want to do, but that might needlessly reduce simple comprehension if made a part of the main rules. I think that this is an option that allows everyone to go home happy, and allows the company to sell more books. It's win/win. The only way this impacts the basic rules is that they have to be structured in such a way that less simple advanced rules can be introduced compatibly.

Yes, I did obviously miss it. The giveaway was me saying "I missed that, or I wouldn't have posted all this mess." Due to my work schedule and how it compares to everyone else in the world's work schedule, I often miss the busiest 8-10 hours of posting, daily -- and then I skim them as best I can, check for my name in anything, and reply as time allows. That's what happened here. I didn't read your post to Ellery, I read your post to me.

And, I guess it was tough to tell, but my bit about calling it "Connor Pool" in exchange for a ton of cash was what Hollywood sometimes calls "a joke." Unlike the rest of my post(s) to you.

I'm not quite sure it comes down to that simulationist/narrative divide either. I think we're talking about something different. I wouldn't say that combat pool, or tactical pool, or whatever, is simulationist. It's quite possibly not even entirely realistic at all. But every game has its signature mechanics, its characteristic rules that flavor the game. In one of my often-used examples (because I love this game too), look at White Wolf's Exalted and it's Stunt bonus system. The Stunt system is not a necessary mechanic. But what it does is it rewards players with mechanical bonuses for bringing together their character's abilities and presenting them in a cinematic and narrative way. It is a mechanic that enriches the theme of the game, because at its heart, Exalted is all about cinematic and epic narrative.

Shadowrun is a different game. It is narrative, absolutely (afterall, it has a constantly evolving metaplot that drives the products). But it is also strongly formulaic. And I don't say that with the negative connotation you might hear a movie reviewer use. But look at Shadowrun, at its core, it focuses on "the run." The job, its planning, and its execution. The opening introduction most players have to Shadowrun is not a personal revelation (like most of White Wolf's Storyteller games), it's the all-hallowed "first run." How are the new runners going to do the job? What's their plan? And how do they deal with the inevitable obstacles thrown in their way. In movies, it's the classic heist formula that goes all the way back to "The Great Train Robbery" that came out shortly after the moving picture was invented. The thrust of the drama isn't internal identity conflict (ala World of Darkness) or the epic hero's journey (ala Exalted), it's the heist.

The heist drama revolves around decisive action. The characters have a plan and enact that plan. Obstacles are thrown up in their way, conflict (drama) ensues, characters make decisions which drive them towards resolution (they adapt the plan or make decisive off-the-cuff plans). Pick up any heist movie, that's how it goes. Ocean's Eleven, Heat, Ronin, etc. The heist formula is even adapted to most action movies now, which start with "the plan" and how the plan goes awry and the heroes act. In a movie though, nothing happens which doesn't serve the plot (at least, in a well-made movie). If a decision is made and a reaction occurs, positive or negative, it's there to serve the plot. Otherwise it ends up on the cutting room floor. In a game, it's not that simple. You have the dice, which are random. If the dice cause an action to go one way, it is not necessarily the way that best serves the plot. So you have to emphasize the decisions. Otherwise, too much of the resolution comes down to fate (the dice) and not decision, and you lose some of the heist-style drama.

Earlier editions of Shadowrun had this concept down, but it was clumsy. They had a dozen different ugly pools to emphasize decisions, each one for specific types of decisions, and then the karma pool to emphasize the "oh shit, get my ass out of the fire" decisions. Karma pool was less about emphasizing decision and more about divine intervention. If you eliminate this element, the only time a character gets to emphasize decisions is in character generation and spending experience, when they broadly emphasize decisions by investing in certain skills, attributes, etc. If you only have a small emergency pool, you end up only emphasizing the "oh shit" decisions, and the majority of the resolution remains a mix of fate and the broad character generation decisions (i.e., I put this many dice in this skill, now I roll those dice and hope they come out well). If you add another pool that is slightly less rare or refreshes more often, you empower the characters to stress important, but non-emergency, actions on the fly, as opposed to just in character creation. Using a gun is important to the character (so they invest in it during character creation), but choosing to use the gun at this exact moment, for this exact reason becomes emphasized in the now (by adding in these pool dice), as crucial to the character's place in the plot.

I agree with D_E...
Just like stunt dice in Exalted (or the dramatic editing mechanic in Adventure, which is absolutely fantastic), dice pools in Shadowrun allow the player the opportunity to excercise a greater degree of control over where the plot is going and what exactly is going to happen to their character in the immediate future.

I don't think it's necessarily the case that the new, combat-pool-less mechanics will lack such a system, because we haven't got enough information to know that yet...and it's still in playtest.

I'll stop bugging Synner after this, but I'll just point out that there are cases when a couple of pool dice make a big difference, and that's where you have a low TN and you need a lot of successes. That's what my last scenario was getting at. Drain resistance is the most common place for that to happen, but it happens in combat too in SR3. So I reject the thesis that you would only use CP on one or at the very most two attacks. Also, with the right cyber/bioware and good stats, CP in the 10-12 range is not unheard of. (Even a starting character who has gone for sixes in Q, I, and W starts off with 9 pool!) So I'm not sure it's reasonable to assume that everyone is always as CP-starved as Synner seems to assume.

DE--well stated. Good post. I can't add much to that.

Vuron--if it's about narrative vs. simulative systems, why even have dice? It's even more narrative if there are no dice. There's no simulation at all. The story takes center stage, because there is nothing else.

So what you're saying is that the mechanics will inherently be simple, so people who like tactics in their dice will be unsatisfied; but the rules will still be complex and frustrating, so people who like a simple system will be unsatisfied?

I don't really see how that makes sense. Wouldn't it be more sensible to have a few simple sets of rules layered on top of a powerful dice system than lots of complex rule sets layered on top of a simple dice system?

Note added in edit: Wow, the time-of-edit clock isn't synchronized with the time-of-post clock. I wonder how that's managed! Anyway, I edited this 2 minutes after I first posted it.

d20 is an excellent example. The d20 mechanics has some really bizarre "features", such as (in D&D) you being sure that it will take at least 1000 swings for a goblin to kill a well-armored high-level fighter, of there not being a difference between being attacked by goblins or expert longswordsmen if you're advanced enough (they'll both kill you just as slowly), some people being able to take hits that would kill a normal person forty times over, and so on.

Then, added on top of this iffy rules system are a million details about fifteen different types of bonus to AC that stack with each other but don't stack with themselves, a half dozen different ways to get bonuses or penalties to three different types of saving throws used under partially arbitrary situations, etc..

I do not find d20 to be a tactically interesting game in terms of the mechanics. D&D is tactically interesting to some extent because of the rules, because there are so darned many of them. It is hardly "simple" or "streamlined" or anything like that.

But, look, if you want a system to be like that, use d20 already! It's been used as an April Fools joke before, but seriously--d20 has the "simple mechanics, complex rules" genre down cold. It's tested, well-known, and free for any company to use if they want to. Why not use d20 unless you are trying to do something other than simple mechanics with complex rules?

SR is currently in the "complex mechanics, complex rules" category. That puts it in a good position to go the other way from d20--interesting mechanics with relatively simple rules (i.e. not too many, and with a similar flavor). Or it could just go the dumbed-down route and make everything simple.

Edited to better acknowledge the distinction between d20 and D&D.

Back on topic: the whole "expert failing" thing can be easily avoided if you can trade dice in for guaranteed successes. Maybe something like six dice for one guaranteed success (or five for one if you use exploding dice).

This then makes things too certain, but it's probably better than the unreasonably high failure rate that you'd otherwise have. (And with exploding dice, any opposed test isn't certain to work even if you have guaranteed successes.)

it's only certain for low-threshold tasks, ell. if you need 3 successes to succeed, then you'd need 15 or 18 dice to auto-succeed. seems fairly reasonable.

Well, 60-70% of the time you'd do better to roll (depending on whether the dice explode or not, and whether you trade 5/1 or 6/1), and only about 10% of the time would you do worse, but maybe that's not skewed enough.

I think you'd just end up with a situation in which any test that can be autosuccessed will be, save those in which the player wants extra successes for some reason, and that just seems a bit dull for me.

~J

Point taken, but then how do you hit the target when you're practicing with your firearms? People with only a bit of training routinely hit the target every time with, say, 100 rounds, at a distance of, say, 10m. That means they're rolling at least 12 dice. Their stat is maybe 3 or 4; their skill is probably less than 3. Where do the other 6+ dice come from?

Unless you introduce autosuccesses, they don't come from anywhere. It can't happen. Another part of the reason I dislike the fixed-TN system.

~J

Or maybe I'm just a handgunning prodigy, who never knew he had Pistols(Glock 19) 8(12)!

I suppose it's worth pointing out that they can't do this reliably in SR3, either. If anything, as it stands, it's worse there! Once you get a little skill (say, 3), if you add combat pool, you don't miss much (well under 1% of the time if you aim and thus use 6 dice against TN3). But skills of 1 and 2 (and higher, if you don't have pool) are practically useless in SR3 for reliably generating success.

Sure, but aiming for 6 extra dice? That's...interesting.

*sulks as his godlike pistol skill is snatched away from him*

Damn you and your fiendish "a-rith-ma-tic!"

It is okay for shooting because you can add pool and reduce your TN by aiming. If you're going to do something like, say, make a sharp turn while driving (and you're not a rigger), you don't have those advantages. That said, the most important things you do while running do have pool that can be applied. So it's sort of partially fixed in SR3, but it could certainly be a lot better.

Making a sharp turn while driving doesn't even require a roll. Doing so in combat or in bad weather are things that people legitimately fail at. Most of the stuff that you should be able to expect to succeed and that is important enough that they always make you roll either has a pool or some other form of aid.

~J

making a sharp turn in combat or bad weather without a VCR is one of the things that doesn't. another would be climbing a wall, jumping, or pulling the ripcord on a parachute (speaking of things in need of revision...)

I'm arguing that you shouldn't be expecting to succeed in a full-speed sharp turn in combat or bad weather without a VCR. Regarding parachuting, that's just broken rules.

~J

C'mon, it's not like inexperienced skydivers don't average Moderate injury in real life.

Inexperienced skydivers routinely injure themselves with the seriousness of a typical gunshot wound?

~J

I don't want to average one success, I want to get one success nearly every time. That's the difference. To get one success nearly every time (99%+) with a fixed TN of 5, I need to use overkill to the point where I'm averaging 4 successes.

Sorry, the relatively high minor injury rate for inexperienced skydivers (sprained ankles, etc.) confused the issue for me. I had assumed that it was a misunderstanding of the damage levels, I'll try harder next time

~J

So, okay. We admittedly know next to nothing about the impending SR4 rules system save for its most basic mechanics. Given that, however, I think we've isolated two ideas that would cure most of the major sources of weirdness in the fixed target number system:

1. Exploding Dice
When you roll a six, you are entitled to immediately roll a second die.

2. Certainty at Cost
You may purchase successes at a cost of five dice, before a diceroll is made.

The former eliminates impossibility in situations that are merely improbable, while retaining their improbability. On the other hand, it does tend to provide a minor boost to the number of hits one can produce on any diceroll. Given that both sides will be getting the increased hits, however, and that the increase in hit likelihood is very minor, I don't view either of those as unbalancing factors.

The latter eliminates the strange and unrealistic likelihood of failing on routine tasks that, even while low, is not low enough. It certainly doesn't make buying a headshot from a moving vehicle a possibility, but it does make for better modelling of things like target practice, doing minor technical and medical tasks, and other situations where any moderately competent character should be able to succeed so routinely as to have the likelihood of minor success approach 100%.

Are there any other oddities of the system, on a numeric scale, that are unhandled(or introduced) by these two concepts?

Getting half as many successes as you typically would on average doesn't seem like a very good way to be a munchkin (unless you are doing something like spellcasting repeatedly and automatically never taking any drain, and there can be advanced rules to deal with that).

you'd have to be casting some pretty low-drain spells, for that to work. i don't predict any real problems there.

No, no, the advanced rules would be fatigue rules, not modifications to the dice mechanics.

No, I mean the entire free-half-successes idea. It's either useless for the people it's designed for or broken for high-skilled people.

~J

it's hardly useless. it's just not useful if you need more than 1-2 successes.

2+ successes is when it should cease applying, or at least cease being very useful for characters who are not, statistically, in the top 5% of their field.

It's designed to ensure reasonably certain success at trivial tasks. 3+ successes is probably a non-trivial task, and it provides a scaling degree of triviality(i.e. "average" characters with six dice will be able to succeed in only the most basic things trivially, by sacrificing five of their six available dice for a single success, while an uber-character with Intelligence of 9 and Computer(B/R) of 12 might very well consider something that requires 4 successes, the sacrifice of 20 of their 21 dice, to be trivial.)

I know that as my own ability to assemble and repair computers jumped from novice to its present level (I won't say I'm an expert, but I do it often enough nowadays that I'm much, much better than I was even two or three years ago), things I considered very difficult became trivial, or nearly so. As skill rises, that which becomes easily repeated as a trivial task should also become somewhat more complex. Upgrading RAM used to scare me(opening the case, really), but now I've got no real issues with swapping out motherboards and other such things which require use of the hated, hated screwdriver.

I like the idea of eventually reaching a point where you can at least pull off, albeit without much degree of flair, certain tasks that you're otherwise going to be prone to failure in at a higher rate than d20's famous "I fail 5% of the time no matter what, even when I try to tie my shoes" mechanic.