Shadowrun is probubally the most awsome setting the planet today.
The definative blend of magic and machine.
Far too close to the real for comfort(don't believe me check the timline again).
A game that involves backing up a truckful of d6 to make a dice roll.
The only place where the "little guy" can make a difference.
The system doesn't matter to much as long as its good use d6s and isn't d20(call it an irational hatred).
A game where dragon spirits and metahumans play chess and the pawns fight back.
The only fantasyesq setting with science behind elves, dwarfs, orks and trolls.
And everything else for that matter.
If the world doesn't get wrecked(which I believe it won't) nothing about the new systemm scares me off.

What is Shadowrun to me... hmm...

Magic and high technology side by side.
Characters who are skilled professionals, not rookie pillocks.
A kind of 1980's energy - the world may be spiralling out of control, but we're holding on and maybe even helping steer it.
And, yes, a somewhat more moral framework than might otherwise exist in such a game. Blame the 80's-ness of it What was that Angel quote? "When nothing you do matters, the only thing that matters is what you do".

In the end, "What is Shadowrun" is one of those concepts that is always going to be hard to put into words. What is Classical Music? How can you recognise it when you hear it? Believe me, that's a tougher question than you might think. There's a "classical" composition by John Cage called 4' 33". I'll play you the opening.





Like it? Anyway.

For the record, I'm open to negotiation on the new game, now that I've accepted that it is a new game and not a new edition of the old one.

EDITed for accuracy on the piece of "music"

true, cain. however, like i said in another thread, the emphasis i've seen so far has been on streamlining as opposed to simplifying. when you streamline something, you don't necessarily remove any mass, you just make it flow better. the rules can (not saying they will, since i'm not a playtester) still have a lot of breadth and depth--maybe even as much breadth and depth as they had in SR3. but they'll flow better and have fewer unreasonably disparate mechanics.

Are we reading the same FAQs? I'm seeing plenty of simplification, and only hoping for streamlining. When one says "TNs are now 5", that is a simplification. If you have to add a bunch of other rules to compensate for the inherent problems in a fixed TN system, then it could be even less streamlined than before--we don't know what the other rules are, but have heard hints that they are there.

So I'll grant that they claim to be streamlining, and I see some examples of streamlining, but it also looks like they're simplifying without streamlining, too.

I suppose it depends what we think is streamlined and what we think is simple.

I think "simple" means "easy to understand", whereas "streamlined" means "efficient to implement". If you have 100 different modifiers to, say, Armor Class in D&D, that's easy to understand, so it is simple. But it is not streamlined, because it takes forever to add up all those modifiers. In contrast, I think an Open Test in SR3 is not simple, because you have to roll dice, then reroll them, then find the higest one--less straightforward than just "roll to get N or higher". But it's streamlined because once you've got the hang of it, it's quick. (Of course, enough stuff has been added to make it so it's not all that streamlined any more either....)

That's what I meant when I said "simple" and "streamlined". What did you mean?

Ah, see, to me "streamlined" in a RPG context means that everything uses the same mechanics as much as possible.

D20 is streamlined because no matter what action you are trying to accomplish, you always solve it the same way.

"Efficient to implement" is a mouthful and not that meaningful if you look at it carefully. What does that mean? That's it's simple to use?

Anyway, a quick search showed me that the definition of streamlining has both simple and efficient in it, in a context of modernizing something. So basically, if you streamline, you make simple something that was not! Kinda make both of our previous posts about streamlining VS simple seem a tiny bit moronic, eh?

I think roleplaying etymology will end here for me.

"Efficient to implement" means that you can resolve the test quickly and with a minimum of effort. This could be because it's simple, but it could also be because it is elegant, and once you get the hang of it, it's quick to know what to roll, roll it, and understand the result.

For example, play in chess is streamlined. Moves are not simple to make intelligently, but all you have to do is pick up a piece and place it down somewhere else in a way that follows a couple simple rules.

Edited to fix my meaning when it comes to chess.

i agree that there is some simplification, but it seems like the main focus has been on streamlining. for instance, the attribute split.

I'm not sure the attribute split counts as streamlining. That looks like balancing the attribute-to-skill ratio. Especially with the attribute + skill mechanic, I think it will actually make things flow less smoothly, since there will be more numbers to remember, and thus more pauses while people look things up. It will, however, hopefully put the different attributes on a more even footing in terms of utility.

I'm not sure how splitting attributes up into more attributes counts as anyone's definition of "streamlining."

Had the same thought when reading it.

No one mentioned mullets?? Shame.

The Platonic shadowrun...
I'm with Ronin on most of it. No matter what, it's 1980's at the core. You can't lose that. Cyberpunk with fantasy, elves with cyber (and mullets). The fight against the megacorps with cyberware, firearms, magic and matrix, all set in the near future.

Mechanics wise, roll a number of d6 based on skills against a variable target number and count successes.

Faster people move more often than slower people.

Firearms, mages, gunbunnies and ninjas all required. Povery vs. rich, human vs. inhuman, life vs. death, chaos vs. order, stagnation vs. chaos, all play into the world.

Don't forget, something can still be 'Shadowrun' without being TRUE shadowrun. But it is only a shadow on the cave wall. Freeform Shadowrun is still shadowrun, an image of the True Shadowrun.

It goes without saying, however, that D20 SR (I feel dirty just uttering such things) is a crime against nature. It is a twisting of all that is true, and must be purged.

Honestly, when I think Shadowrun, I don't think about d6s or game mechanics. I'm not a mechanics kind of guy. I don't labor over house rules or game probabilities. As long as the game mechanics work more with my game than against it, it doesn't matter to me what dice I'm rolling. The idea of d20 Shadowrun sets off no alarm bells. I don't even care much about the purely mechanical changes mentioned in SR4. Dice are dice. A change of mechanics might change expected outcomes a bit, but it would take a seriously radical change to disrupt the game.

Shadowrun is the setting. The setting is a hodgepodge of genres, but the most important overriding one is its cyberpunk sensibility; corporations are all-consuming, and all-powerful; any sense of authority you might look to (government, police, sometimes organized religion) is ineffectual at best and corrupt at worst. The eponymous shadowrunners, meanwhile, may be dirty, unkempt, shifty criminals, and they may even border on murderous, but they are also the closest things the world has to heroes... if only because everyone else is even worse. Shadowrunners are subversives and outlaws; they work within the corporate world, but are not of it. They walk the line between the corporatized masses and the downtrodden slumdwellers and madmen who couldn't hack the corporate life. Some of them cling to antiquated beliefs and codes that stand apart from the mechanized corporate world (street samurai, shamans); others just have an irrepressable desire for personal freedom that is no longer welcome. And of course, some of them might just be crazy.

The technology and other elements of the setting are not so much realistic as they are reasonable facsimiles: familiar but not real. The technology is distinctive and unreal. Those elements of fantasy and other genres are adapted to fit this mold; dragons and immortal elves are little different from the corporate sharks they mingle with.

The key thing that probably differs in Shadowrun from cyberpunk is that there's still a glimmer of hope in Shadowrun. A very faint one. The shadowrunners can't save the world, but the world doesn't take its mechanization lying down; oppressed peoples find their ancient traditions suddenly empowered, and nature itself sometimes strikes back at those that trespass against it.