Hey everyone,

So I figured after having started reading the forums a bit this past week since SR5 is coming out soon that surely SOMEONE else is excited. I have a theory that there is a very vocal minority that is upset about some of the new rules, but the majority of the community is excited for a new system, improving on and and expanding from SR4.

So what do you think? What are you excited about from the new system?

-DrZ

My optimism was high and rising as the devs discussed things on the blog. As I see material coming out I'm retreating back to Bogata!

You're misunderstanding. People are upset about the new rules precisely because they're excited for the new system, but it's not looking as promising as they'd wish.

QFT. I was excited about limits and wireless bonuses and so on, but the rules that have come out have been...lackluster at best.

I'm excited for the overall direction of the product with a handful of bitches based on what we've seen. I put myself at cautiously optimistic due to the issues I have.

The 5th edition looks like it has checked off 2.5 out of 3 of my essential boxes for me to come back to a new edition. I know better than to get my hopes too high though, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

There are some game direction things I don't care for, but so far they seem like they'll be very easy to homerule away. So long as 5th edition does return to forcing those things in later books, I'll probably be shelling out for a number of products. But at this point it is still very conditional.

Limits didn't bother me that much. I saw them as a necessary complication to cut down on dice pool bloat by having another potential vector that bonuses could go to. I was discouraged by some of the other rules, but the nail in the coffin for me was those stupid wireless bonuses. I could have gotten behind the concept if they had expanded on things like tacnets, but needing to connect to the matrix so your wired reflexes and your reaction enhancers can work together is beyond lame. I won't be getting it when it comes out. I will wait until they fix some of the more glaring problems, and possibly I won't be converting to the new edition at all. It's a shame, because the initial previews had me excited for it.

I'm not CGL's target audience and haven't been for years. I don't expect SR5 is a game made to scratch my itch, so I haven't even been reading about it.

I'd love to be surprised though.

I could get behind things like clearly wireless functionality in items (the inductive charging thing is actually quite clever), but some of them are retarded.

And it pretty much moved me from "excited" to "fence" in one fell swoop.

Take the submarine it's faster.

Also I voted no as I never buy new editions of anything until after I have had a chance to try them out and see if they are better than the old ones.

Definitely bearish at this point. I'll probably spring for the .pdf, but I'm out of the market for a $60 hardback version of rules that it's looking like I'm going to have to do heavy lifting in the houserule department to make playable at my table.

I went with cautiously optimistic. I love getting new rulesets and delving into them and learning them. So, I am still excited about doing despite some dire portents I have already seen about them. Wireless bonuses: Idea = good. Implementation = bad. I am not going OMG Hackable 'ware! I always assumed it was hackable, and either exploited that potential or took steps to prevent it. I even made a GM cry when my fully cybered up character and an ai character had his node implanted inside and linked up so he could control my 'ware at his convenience. Ai + skillwires = continue operating while unconscious. Even if operating was simply fleeing.

The problem being most of the bonuses seem stupid. Oddly, one of the few I actually do like is the wired reflexes + reaction enhancers online allowing you to exceed the regular cap. That is nifty. GPS/phone on a knife? Useful if in an area with matrix access and you lost your commlink.

I am also not as upset about it as many because most of the wireless bonuses seem so worthless as to be negligible to begin with. Change color of the gun only while online. What? Concealable holster more concealed while online?

I'm all in.

I can house rule the worse of it (switch the bonuses on Smartguns, Allow DNI links to active gear as a free action, restore skin links).

I like nearly all of the structural changes they are making.
My issues are all about them going a bridge too far.

Plus since I run in 2056, I'll need to house rule some of the changes just to stay in the spirit of the setting.
Maybe set Delta prices to 4 times base cost instead of 2.5.

I was ready to buy it for the change to stick and shock alone and the skills going up to rating 12 alone.

I will definitely wait for the errataed german version AND for (German) Running harder, because the Priority System is ...Sub-optimal and I'd like to have the karma Version for Char Creation
So I'll have to wait maybe for 1/2 a Year

with a patient Dance
Medicineman

Stahlseele suggested that I should bide my time and learn German until the German SR5 drops. I then wondered why nobody would back-translate the German SR5 into English and sold as Shadowrun 5 + German Engineering, and he pointed out that the German producers offered and CGL declined.

*Sigh*

The forums are angry because we've been anticipating SR5 for a while, and now it's turning out to look like a major subsystem is going to be so thoroughly screwed-up as to render the entire setting irreconcilable. It's not asking us to suspend our disbelief the way we can suspend our disbelief to accept the existence of magic, cybertechnology and Great Dragons, it's asking us to suspend so much disbelief that we just accept whatever they tell us. It is fully equivalent, if more complex, to telling us to accept that wearing a flourescent pink, neon suit grants you a bonus to initiative whilst at the same time negating any attempt at stealth, and telling us to accept that as a fair trade-off, nevermind the fact that does not make sense.

It's very much like an MMORPG telling you that a man wearing approximately as much armor plate as went into the construction of a main battle tank's turret and a woman wearing an inch-and-a-half-thick steel bikini are equally as protected. That flies in an MMORPG because hey, most of the demographic likes looking at nearly-naked women. It even can fly somewhat in fantasy TTRPGs, though there are still places that if you bring it up, you'll light off a firestorm.

But Shadowrun isn't like that. Shadowrun is a game that tells us that the game setting is our world plus sixty-some years and magic. We can accept both of those premises. We can accept the cyberware premise, too, we can accept hot-sim VR, we can accept elves and trolls and so forth and so on as being sapient beings with genetics very similar enough to that of baseline humans as to interbreed. We can accept those. We cannot accept "don your flourescent pink neon zoot suit to gain a bonus to initiative," because that has no basis in the physical laws of our world and the suit is not enchanted to do so. And even if it were, we would question why the suit cannot be, say, an enchanted outfit which is matte black, or rutherenium, or why we cannot then cover the enchanted pink initiative-enhancing suit and still retain the initiative bonus whilst regaining your stealth bonus.

We're angry, because we want to love Shadowrun 5, we want it so very much, but something which is wholly incongruous to the setting we know has been installed as a core part of the setting.

To put it in an analogy, it's like someone who is an avid motoring enthusiast, eagerly anticipating the day when Porsche releases a true successor to the Carrera GT (love that car,) and they make something which is beautiful and handles like a dream... But the engine only operates on two cylinders and the transmission only operates as an automatic in first through fourth gear, unlessyou activate the car GPS system that records your location and rate of travel and makes this information freely available to anyone (including law enforcement officers) who thinks to ask it.

I am sorry if I am being obtuse, but I am curious, why would the German version necessarily be that much different than the English version? Maybe I missed a key post somewhere to explain how the errata would be that much of an improvement so sorry if this seems a dumb question.

If the forum shitstorm is any indication, Mystic Adept Hackers/Deckers are going to be the most awesome characters ever.

I am sooo the targeted marketing demographic for this: I already preordered 2 Core Books and a Limited Edition (one for the Shelves, one as Birhtday Present, one for me, oh dang I forgot one for my wife..., oha wait - no she gets the german one) in my local gaming store.
If it is Shadowrun and L5R I am an early adopter (or as we call it in Austria, A Trottel) only with the Microsoft Game I dodged a bullet but SR Returns is already preordered.

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! A Run After Midnight... Rickrolla!
Sunshine

What, CGL even implying they can make mistakes?

Bearish. Maybe the iffy parts can be salvaged with house ruling. Maybe not. A fucking pity, because SR5 had many ideas I could get behind in an instant. So far, however, I haven't liked many implementations.

Mystake Adepts sure, deckers we will have to see how fast you can hack for real effect. If at best you are ejecting a clip in your pass, its kind of a so what level. Hacking might still not be up to snuf for combat hacking on the players side. Now the GM can really hose the players with it though as the deckers in the corp facility have all the time in the world to get the players. The players bump into a security team, they don't have all the time in the world to hack them. Still they sped it up and deckers were already one of the most awesome archetypes in the game so now the hecking they used to do can be done with less prep.

I'm excited. More shadowrun stuff is always good.

The German version has errata.

IF i decide to buy this at all, then yes, as Medicineman said, i will be buying the obviously better german version as well . .
If only just to know what's being talked about anyway . . no plans of playing this period.

And tends to cut content that is nonsensical, i.e. the Slow spell and the Concentration camp ghosts from War.

Just a guess, but I think there may be other reasons they'd be hesitant to discuss concentration camp ghosts? I know there are laws in Germany about how you can and can't discuss the Holocaust.

What are your essential boxes if you don't mind me asking?

I'm excited. Avoided 4th Ed due to "I hate change". But 5th looks a lot crisper and I like a lot of what I have seen from the direction of the line as a whole. The wireless bonuses are a yellow flag for me. But I'm planning on running the rules as written for a while before house ruling anything.

And more of what was good in SR4.

Unified game mechanics are so nice for the overworked GM.

I think that thing that finally made me give up on SR3 was the mechanics for Rigger vs Building Security Rigger/spyder at least as far as buying non adventures.
SR3 kept getting less and less fluff and more and more hard core ad hoc mechanics bolted on to the core.
I'm not throwing stones - the Six World covers RL, AR, VR, and the Astral plane simultaneously.
I'm just saying it was extremely hard for a GM to keep up with all the new mechanics.
I ended up running a decade long campaign using SR1-3.
And started a new campaign when 4th came out because I liked what I saw.

So I'm looking forward to seeing a Matrix at actually works.

Hmmmp.
I don't know anything about that and I'm relatively close to Pegasus .
I'd like to know where Stahlseele is getting this Info



The German versions usually are the Errattaed versions. Pegasus is in very close contact to CGL and the ommit everything they translate to CGL and while they translate they also proofread and correct mistakes (with a Go from CGL)
They also add German material (IIRC the German SR5 will have 2 or 4 more pages of pure german content about the ADL)



with an improved Dance
Medicineman

I'm extremely excited about a lot of the concepts, but I'm iffy on a bunch of the implementations. I like the idea of limits, but I think a lot of them look like they're too high. I like the faster hacking, but I'm extremely put off by the ham-fisted way players are being encouraged to make themselves vulnerable to it. I like the idea of changing how recoil works, but I'm annoyed that the book can't seem to not contradict itself on how it works. I like the return to Priorities (since I tend to play mundane humans), but I'm iffy on how it's going to handle the Quality Bloat coming with the character creation option supplement.

All in all, I'm looking forward to it. But it's going to grate on me a little bit if I see a lot of things that could have been done better.

There are laws against hate speech in America too, you know.

Cautiously Optimistic.

My plan is to get the PDF, give it a few test runs, houserule anything I do not like, and only play awakened characters for missions

Respectfully, Hermit, what are the "hate speech" laws in America to which you refer. Absent VERY limited exceptions (e.g., incitement to a violation of criminal law that is both imminent and likely, civil defamation or fraud), the First Amendment essentially guarantees an individual's right to be as offensive, crass and hurtful as he or she wishes without interference from the government. Under certain circumstances, proof of speech targeting certain groups or individuals based upon protected characteristics (gender, religion, race, etc.) may impact a sentence rendered against a criminal defendant, but the language itself cannot be criminalized.

The USA, both federally and at the State level, has no equivalent to European and Canadian laws against Holocaust denial or speech that offends minorities. As a trial lawyer in New York City, if such laws existed, I can assure you that the courts would grind to a halt

Oh. Well, I guess any possible reply would be against TOS, so thanks for the correction.

Now, Canada. Canada has laws against hate speech.
No complaints here.

Except for that whole part that it is Canada?

*ducks*

Oh really?
Just for that, I'm revoking your maple syrup privileges.

Before returning to our regularly scheduled SR5 program, I just want to emphasize that my recitation of the law in no way implies that I find hate speech acceptable. For example, I am Jewish and lost large portions of my family in the Holocaust. Neo-Nazis, bigots and Holocaust deniers will certainly receive no sympathy from me. However, I do agree with the American system that abhors criminalization of speech, but rather believes hateful speech is countered by yet more opposing speech.

Also note that the First Amendment only protects you from government reprisal. With some limited exceptions, bigotry often results in being fired from your job (if privately employed), restaurants and other businesses refusing to deal with you and general community shaming, without any potential for legal recourse - protections often available in other countries.

Lastly, and more importantly, I'm definitely excited for SR5 - wireless cyber-warts and all. I would also agree with the proposition that CGL likely (and wisely) intentionally avoids matters such as concentration camp ghosts and other sensitive subjects like real world religion and politics, except as allegory. As a general proposition, wading into real politics usually only serves to alienate some of your consumer base. In a small industry, when you want to reach the widest amount of customers worldwide, and earn a profit doing it, controversy is bad business.

This discussion of speech rights and role-playing reminds me of the arguments in the USA in the early 1980's that playing Dungeons & Dragons encouraged devil worship. Darn, I feel old . . .

Ah, reminds me of an anti-semitic joke an ex-Jewish friend of mine made (targeted at himself).

I unfortunately cannot repeat it in any circumstances.

Never took it as such.


The quest to slay concentration camp ghosts (in context, and in blatant contradiction to Shadowrun canon, the actual souls of actual Holocaust victims) to gain the Scalpel of +3 Jew Mauling was published in War!, a CGL product and Jason Hardy's rather badly received first production. I agree, however, they better avoid ever publishing something like this (or inciting antiziganist progroms, for that matter) ever again.


It is more like outrage about FATAL, however.

CGL sadly doesn't do that, concentration camp ghosts and "magical knife of jew slaying" is explicitly part of the setting.

By Baphomet's Blue Balls, we were DEMON worshippers back then, not devil worshippers!! Get it right!

*ahem*

Yeah I remember those days as well, and the movie Mazes & Monsters didn't help.

I remember my first D&D game was basically lifting heavily from the setting of The Hobbit....

and they did it wrong too.

Ugg . . . I never purchased WAR! due to the "uneven" reviews and the purported lack of proper editing. If the book's contents are half as bad as you describe, well . . . words would fail me . . .

On a lighter note, Tashiro's Canadian patriotism and my flashback to the 1980's, fondly reminded me of the 1983 classic, Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew. I think CGL needs a supplement for running in the shadows in The Great White North in 2075. In Maplerun (or maybe, TimHortonsRun), shadowrunners are involved in the devilish machinations, underhanded dealings and cutthroat competition of mega-corporate breweries in the northern reaches of the UCAS.

BTW, what would the matrix bonus be if your donuts were online, +2 DP to all rolls for yummy, fattening goodness?

I might have to borrow that for my game. >.>
Hmm. If your donuts are online, then the flavour-control nanites can tailor the taste of each doughnut to your specific physiology, which grants a recovery of a point of Edge, if it's from Tim Horton's. It also, unfortunately, increases the chance of addiction, requiring one more Hit to resist. >.>

What's the corporate status of Tim Horton's in 2075? Sadly, I think it would probably be a subsidiary of Aztechnology or Ares.

I hope you enjoy your soy donut (soynut?) with algae frosting with your steaming cup of soycaf.

Well ... I could copypaste you the stuff in a PM if you want to, but ... I don't use hate speech lightly, and Pegasus doesn't censor books as they did with War! lightly too.


Ares, probably, given their location. Maybe they once were Cross, though. It'd make them more interesting at least. Also, for all Canadians, there's a PDF on Montréal as a Shadowrun location.

Hopefully, not Ares. Given its recent troubles, well . . ., let's just say I don't want insect (spirits) anywhere near my donuts! It's simply wrong.

Also, does Montreal really count as Canada in 2075? It is, after all, part of the country of Qeubec, and even worse, its French Canadian Does Tim Horton's even sell croissants? /sarc

Unhygienic, too. Though given what my dad told me about his one-time work in a large bakery chain ... eww.

Just need to get your own personal KE/LS MCCDS-01 “DOUGH-MASTER”MOBILE COMMAND CENTER/DOUGHNUT SHOP from Rigger 4.

A rare joint effort between both Knight Errant and Lone Star Security, the MCCDS-01 was the brainchild of Ares engineer T. Horton (descendant maybe?) and an AI known only as “Dunkin.”

Built from an Ares Mob Master chassis and sporting two built in Doughnut making units it can bring the doughnut to you.

Caution: Knight Errant and Lone Star will defend these things with their LIVES, so expect to get a little bloody trying to lay hands on one of these and with a 50F availability even the best fixer will be stretching to try and find one on the blackmarket.