This is an incredible idea, in my view. And it would fit in nicely with what we have heard so far. Is it something you´ve had in mind? (speaking to developers)

I read it. Do I win anything? What do I win? Tell me when I win!

Newb!... Hahaha!

I must say that the only thing that I havn't specifically liked about the noted updates so far is the change to deckers/riggers. But I don't specifically dislike it either as I can completely see the logic and game decisions behind it all. Especially if the tech level gets a big boost. My gaming group and I were talking about this the other night, basically I thought that in the future a vehicle would most likely be little more than a glorified computer on wheels; with systems such as Autonav, and many others, a car in the SR world would probably be a completely on-line machine. I mean even in today's world we have cars with built in computers, GPS tracking, Autonav, and many other on-line feature. So in the future of 2070 why wouldn't deckers and riggers pretty much be the same thing...if you can hack a database, you have hack a car...

And so far I too think the mechanical changes are a great thing, but I am still a bit leary on how much more will change. Only time will tell...I guess I'm holding on to cautious optimism.

Well "Perception" has the very specific connotation of just "noticing details"; whereas "Intuition" can encompass all connotations of Perception and still have a wide enough definition to cover more things. And in truth a person's "Intelligence" is more than just simple logic and any given IQ test will have things that deal with creativity and other "non-cold-logic" aspects of a persons intelligence. So in SR it looks like the devide between Intuition and Logic is more of a distinction between the right and left half of the brain....maybe. Which for game terms is good enough...

A free trip to Glow City!!

Yes, but do you count as someone who can change anything? If not, then everything we're posting here is pretty much an exercise in futility.

For instance, among the many discussions here it was mentioned how completely stupid the current "SR4 FAQ" is. It doesn't serve to attract new players because all it does is reference what has changed, which doesn't matter to new players. It doesn't serve to inform existing players of what the new system will be like at all, because there are no actual rules mentioned in the posts. All we get are cryptic references to new in-game vocabulary terms that will be seen in the new rules, which only serve to cause endless confusion and debate, with people trying to dissect the vocabulary words that will be in the new book and reverse-engineer those into what the rules will be, a process that will invariably be wrong but will still cause engless, pointless arguments and confusion. Noone who actually wants to market a book would post up the kind of crap that the "SR4 FAQ" is.

It would be far more productive, interesting to the readers, and better marketing in general to write something like Monte Cook's Design Diaries, which zero in in a specific aspect of the rules and explain it in detail, including the motivations and design considerations that lead up to that decision/set of rules. A design diary entry like that would help people understand the motications and considerations that the dev team put into the rules, and at the very least alleviate the fear some of us have that they simply spread out other PRG books on the floor and threw darts at them, picking whatever mechanics the darts landed on and calling it Shadowrun.

Now, do I expect this to change anything with Fanpro? Of course not. This has been brought up a number of times before and nothing's changed, and I expect nothing to change now. I contend that you, Adam, and indeed anyone who actually reads this post are in fact either powerless to do anything meaningful, or, if not, than be either too lazy or too uncaring to actually change things for the better. And, at the same time, all the suggestions on this board will continue to become more and more disjointed and unrelated to the actual system, because the "FAQs" as presented so far don't actually tell us a damn thing except that you've thrown all the old mechanics out the window.

They would, if there weren't intellectual ownership and copyright issues.

In some cases, yes. I am contributing to SR4 development, and I'm paying close attention here, as I have been since, well, before Dumpshock was Dumpshock.

We're certainly going to be more in-depth stuff in the future about specific mechanics and world situations.

There are specific reasons why we're doing the early FAQ entries in the current style, and for those purposes, we're quite happy with it.

Or we simply don't agree on the "right" way to be doing things. The FAQ solution right now is not perfect, but it's generating some great discussion. Also, it's certainly not the only advertising or promotion for SR4 that we'll be doing, as we'll be doing ads in all the major trade magazines, the Origins/GenCon booklet, etc. This is still the early stages of a longer plan.

I'm pretty certain that within US copyright rules and likely the Berne convention that game mechanics themselves cannot be copyrighted. Thus it's perfectly acceptable for other companies to borrow something like Exalted's stunt mechanics and adapt it for thier system (in fact it's been done).

Thus whenever some designs houserules for a game on the internet they really can't sue if someone else borrows portions of those rules for thier game.

What can be copyrighted is the fluffy crap that we surround the base mechanics in but otherwise it would be perfectly acceptable for WotC to say they have the copyright on the mechanic that using a d20 vs a variable TN. This patently is not the case regardless of whether or not you include the OGL.

to get people up and screaming about it, so everybody's paying attention to it. much the same reason i put spiders in my brother's bed!

This is just a theory, but I think they're operating under the (perfectly reasonable) assumption that the more detail they go into now the more current fans they'll lose due to the vocal, overblown hysterics of a few. No matter what they do some segment of the SR3 audience will hate SR4 (or at least rabidly claim to until it's released, the crazy geeks). So keeping hard info down to a slow drip is a good way to try to get people to wait for the final rules before they judge SR4 instead of buying into premature hater dissections.

Three months before press and this is all they have finalized? I doubt it.

Haven't you heard? It's illegal to do anything but complain online. Now, Friend Computer has dispatched Happy Fun Teams to bring you to reeducation facility nine. Cooperate and you'll be a happy citizen in no time.

~J

And, for the most part, I have no problem with this (save for my current misgivings about certain Fanpro writer's ability to write good/self-consistent game mechanics). What is bothering me is that every day I'm finding myself less and less interested in SR4 and everything related to it, largely because the stuff that's being fed to us amounts to little more than vocabulary terms. If we had specific bits of mechanics, or at least something describing the considerations being addressed *behind* the mechanics, if the mechanics themselves haven't been finalized, it would be far more interesting than just throwing one-liners at us.

Typo corrected.

Same here. I am mostly pleased with all the changes, both the will to redsign it from ground and the basic limited pieces we can see in the FAQ. The only thing I would like more, is more design from zero ground, aka more drastic changes. But overall I'm satisfied.

And I have most of SR books since SR1, and I just bought a new SR3 rulebook (my first print started to fall apart) just 2 or 3 month ago

Ummm..... I'm not talking about me forcing players to be one or the other. I'm hoping that if a player chooses to just rig or deck, that he can if he wants.

As Ellery says, it will more than likely be based on skills, so it should definitely be possible to concentrate on one and not have any ability in the other.

Haven't you ever heard the saying, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions?"

Seriously I think you are giving way too much weight to the frenzied opinions of a handful of diehard messageboard fanatics. If anything I'd say that opinions among a broader subsection of the gaming community like RPGnet (and truthfully that's a very small subsection of the total gaming audience but one of the broadest that you can get a decent amount of feedback from relatively rapidly) tend to think these design changes are a very positive sign.

Sure if the core design goal is lets please every dumpshocker out there they kinda screwed up (althougn I think pleasing every Dumpshocker out there might require a contact drug putting some major happy drug being built into every page of a product) but if you assume that as a company they actually want to make money and <gasp> acchieve sales growth then they have to compete with gaming products like d20 and nWoD etc in gaining new gamers.

Chances are they actually thought about what they wanted to do with the license upon acquiring it and have put in hours of brainsweat trying to generate design goals for a new edition that tries to increase sales without pissing of the existing fanbase.

Especially since most of the either a) have never played SR or b) haven't played for years...they have no clue what is going on and are mostly naive. The opinion of some RPGers who in the past threw up their hands and walked away from SR in 1st or 2nd edition is very questionable...at least to me. If this is the target of SR$ then I can see the connection based on some of the recent (proposed) changes.

I personally question the opinion of people who's reaction to the huge stinking pile of crud stuffed into the rules was "Yes sir, I'd like another plate of that headache inducing crud, sir!"

That they are targeting people that like to play a game instead of fight against misshapen rules and build their own house work-arounds? If that makes them money grubbers (as the addition of your $ would imply), then I guess I'll have to say money grubbing is a good thing and my friend. *shrug*

Eh. Communication of opinions with regard to SR didn't occur via the Dumpshock forums back in the days of Sargent and Gasciogne, or at least, not in the same fashion it does now. Back then, #shadowrun on Undernet IRC, a pseudo-precursor (or at least a starting point, it's still there, albeit on its own server now) was pretty much the biggest game in town, though it wasn't quite as legitimized back then. Regardless, virtually everyone I encountered who played the game was pretty unhappy with the direction those two took the setting and system, back then, and I wouldn't describe their opinions as "frenzied".

I mean, do you think the S&G plot advancements were cool? Catholicism is fake, Vatican uses nukes, Leonardo is an IE that can destroy the global network in a heartbeat with his telepathically connected pseudo-alchemical/enchanted uberdeck, etc, etc...? Ways and Paths that made magicians and adepts from Tir na nOg much, much better than magicians and adepts anywhere else? At the time they were developed, and in the immediate aftermath, there was a lot of "I told you so" and "I don't like this. I really don't like this" from the community, but the same sort of plot introductions kept coming until those two vanished off the radar.

Either way, if a whole lot of people disagree, with only a few people agreeing or at least assuming a neutral stance, then it's probably at least worth it to consider whether or not the changes you're doing are as cool or functional as you believe.

Note with the exceptions of the Ways and Paths most of the concepts you've mentioned were contained in the metaplot. Even though I personally dislike the ways and paths with the exception of the uber Path of the Righ they remain relatively playable in SR3.

However we've heard zero about how the metaplot will advance in 5 years at this point in time. It's quite possible the metaplot might have some really crappy ideas incorporated but currently we have zero evidence either way. If the metaplot really sucks I'll be definitely in the screaming hooligan category but without some indication I'm not going to assume a return of Leonardo and the uber IEs yet.

So yeah I'm pretty much talking about the mechanics that have been detailed (if detail is actually a valid description) thus far. Based on anecdotal evidence I'd say that feedback is currently pretty positive among the broader gaming community. Yes the type of feedback I've seen on Dumpshock has been on balance negative I've seen the exact same thing happen on specialized messageboards before Dnd 3.0 came out, as nWoD was being announced etc. In general there has always been a certain % of fans that say fuck this and don't upgrade but when those games were released the doubters tend to come back into the fold. I really don't see SR4 and dumpshock being the exception.

I'm not saying that the fears people are expressing are a bad thing to be venting here in fact I tend to see them as a good opportunity for people to brainstorm and share thier ideas. What is kinda funny to me is that I've seen people do the how dare they change my favorite game several times and for the most part I'm always amused when a good percentage of the haters end up being big supporters later on.

No no you misunderstand. You must have missed the part where SR$ was determined as the official DSF acronym.

Note quite true. The biggie, Crash of '65, is out. I'm guessing that is pivotal to the changes they are making to the underlying rules. Particularly decking.

Yes, yes I did. Link and/or reasoning?

Years of seeing people use T$R and Ha$bro etc has pretty much dimmed the pithy nature of that insult. However I wouldn't be surprised if it pretty much is taken quite personally by the developers and playtesters active here. In any case it's pretty much going to likely cause those people who decide this is a cool insult to lose a good bit of credibility...

Okay I will grant you that but the Crash of '65 being due to the corps using core wars to shatter the world's telecommunication's infrastructure is a lot different than OMG Leonardo used his uberdeck to do a shutdown matrix operation.

We know some vague hints about the metaplot advancing in certain ways although I suspect the Crash of '65 more of a SR3 plot device more than a SR4 metaplot element but details are very very sparse currently.

Note: If system crash is a Leonardo centered adventure than I would tend to say yes some game designers might be getting a handful of choice nastygrams

But it so handily clears the way for massive rethink of the Matrix and deckers. Perhaps I will expand on the waking dream I had while posting here.

I don't even bother with nastygrams. I'm so use to uber-elves being the center of metaplot happenings that I just flat out ignore the instances and dream up my own reason. It's alway warm and cozy in my Happy-Fun Bubble™.

I'd be happy!