Er no, actually. I',m not saying that. I said I'm not bashing the developers for making a new edition. A new edition is a worthy goal if it works okay. Honestly a revision at least needs to be done because of the rule creep that's occurred over the edition.

I have always however been horribly down on the FAQ, primarily the 3rd edition FAQ. This was a dig at the FAQ not the development of 4th edition really. I doubt all or even most the people that are working on 4th were all involved in the FAQ. The FAQ is the target of my vitriol because it represents everything that is wrong with the mindset of game development.

The FAQ is a Frequently asked questions. It is not an eratta, which is a definably separate document. It is supposed to clarify or answer questions about existing rules, where answers come from "people in the know". Instead we get things in the FAQ that have directly contradicted the books. This does not show an inherint understanding of either the existing system, not has it displayed any forethought for the consequences of the answers given in the context of the game world in my opinion.

I don't expect SR4 to be perfect, and honestly I expect it will be decent.

In general all my hostility and sarcasm is directed twards the FAQ and those responsible for it, and my main concerns about SR4 are solely that the person responsible for the FAQ will have enough input into SR4 to screw it up as bad as the FAQ gets.

Beyond that all the other people working on SR have been doing good work and I have enjoyed and purchased all the releases for some time now in 3rd edition.

I apologize if it appeared otherwise. Please consider all my bashing directed solely at the SR3 FAQ and the person responsible for it. No other persons involved do I have a problem with as far as I know.

EDIT: I would also like to add that I apologize profusely to any of the developers or others whom I have offended. Honestly, I know you all are good people just doing your jobs.

Unfortuantely this comes from the fact that this is a very sore spot for me, as SR is the only real RPG that I like, and I like it because of the world/atmoshphere and the basic dice mechanics... Which are the two things positively known so far to be getting an overhaul/replacement.

It isn't because the developers aren't doing a good job, it's because in practice I haven't heard a single thing that tells me from the limited info available so far that it's actually staying something resembling SR except in name. All the info so far is how it's going to be completely different. None of the info has been reassuring. It all points to a sequal or paralell game more than a version update.

Then I guess I am full of shit and I am a fool. What will I ever do? Oh noes!!!!

Well, I'm sorry you're getting all twisted about it.

You are in the enviable postion of being on the inside - with more info than us.

But as has been mentioned - please just don't ecpect us to trust anyone blindly. What we're chewing to death is what little we have - and extrapolations. That's the best we've got. And we've been given very little to make us trust them - curetnly and historically.

A lot of peeps have turned from the "Cool" to the "Err you're doing what?" Becuase of the faqs. I'd say stop doing them until they are ready to give us something as detailed as the Germans seem to be getting - but it looks like they've already tired of us and stopped.

I think it was the 'The more they lift the lid off this thing, the more it stinks' comment that offended them. But then again, maybe they're too busy for us mere fans anymore

Yes, we are.

Number 1 reason for me is that, comparing what I see in English with what we're getting translated from German...

I'm not seeing the same game.

I don't mean same game as in same as SR3.

I mean it feels an awful lot like I'm reading about two different games. Like SR US has one vision and thought, and SR Germany has a completely different thought process going on, and the twain are hardly meeting.

I was wondering when someone would bring that up.

Yeah, it's after reading stuff like that that I immediately concluded that the writer wasn't just clueless about stuff like politics (Oh, man...There's so much I could use here...), law (See Quoted), and government...He was PROUD to be clueless.

I mean, my God! Whoever wrote the Native American Re-education camps stuff for SR1/SR2 ought to have been shot for the sake of humanity. You couldn't pull that off. Not even close. If the courts didn't nail you, the public would.

And we won't go into the multiple SR variations upon violating the Holocaust Law (or at least doing the equivalent with everything else in history), the Crystal Power Law, and the Kill Whitey Law. And, oh yes, the Inquisition Law.

To be fair, SR's current crop have to deal with the accumulated trash we were given previously, and stand upon that.

Or perhaps a deliberate divergence from real-world events?

~J

That's a good point. I think that looking back on that period, a lot of things exist in a strange limbo. For example, with the election of 1992 resulting in a hard-right conservative as President, it begs the question about who was President from 1989-93. The wording of the text also suggests that a majority of the current Court was never appointed (Scalia, Souter, Thomas, Gunsburg or Breyer) as a result of that fact, which helps defer any suggestion about their decisionmaking by having the first fictional President appoint a majority of the Court that decided Seretech and Shiawase (I and II).

Off topic sorry but something just hit a nerve...

Japanese-American Internmit WWII

Can't Happen? Public wouldn't stand for it? Courts? Do some fucking research on what the American government did to those people. 4 fucking years and most of Americans don't even know that it happened.

I think that was his point - It couldn't happen again. The media then is't the same as it is today. The president can't sneeze today witout a camera falling out of his back side. Back then you'd be luck to get a speech that he gave within a week.


War reports took weeks to get to the USA, now we watch the action live. Anything like that atte[pted today would be on every televison in the world within minutes of the occurence, and then we'd come under a lot of heat from the UN.


But I digress.......

Eh? you've got X dice representing your skill - and target number Y (Modified by z dice from your ***** pool). Whether you are in the matrix, astral plane or in the middle of physical combat. Those are the core rules - they are the same for each aspect of the game.

'Less complex ruleset' = Dumb it down.

I don't mind a little streamlining of the rules, i.e. organization and a few tweaks. But I still think that most of the rules are just fine.

I am not asking for a preview right now. Plus it is good to know that a preview WILL be released. I will look forward to that. I think that it really worked for LA. I know I am interested in that one, which chapters I will like and which chapters I might not like.

Veracusse

First of all the complexity in your example lies in the fact that you have at least 7 player characters all clamoring to do something at once. In any game that is going to be complex.

In all the examples of different rules' sets, the basic rule is always the same: Roll skill/attribute Rating + x number from apprpriate Pool = number of dice versus a TN + any modifiers. Modifiers are usually in easy to access charts. Now sure the basic rules are somewhat more complicated then some systems, i.e. roll d20 + Modifiers versus DC + Modifiers.

The SR3 system is just really applicable in many different ways, which is one the beauties of the system.

The real problem, IMO, that many have stated about the SR3 rules is that the main book and source books are not very well organized. It sometimes becomes a challenge to find and reference some rules. But these rules are generally added optional rules that don't necessarily need to be added to the core rules.

This whol nonsense about SR3 being too difficult sometimes gets under my skin. Read the bloody rule book, its not that difficult.

Veracusse

BTW. Your baseless assertions about others and their open-mindedness and how they role-play is rather annoying. You are comming off as an arrogant prick. I don't know if that's what you intend, but it is definitely the tone that I am picking up from your posts.

Err... Okay - you got me with that one. But, that isn't quite to the scale that what happend to the Japanese was. And one hopes that those being gathered are being gathred for a reason other than racial.

What he said.

Also, there's a matter of scale.

Guantanamo has never gotten beyond a few hundred, IIRC.

Both SR and the Japanese Internments are substantially larger.

Which is precisely what my point was, as Eldritch notes so well.

It has happened. It cannot happen again, however. Not something remotely like it (or SR's version).

No chance. Back then, people didn't know about it. Now, how could they not? And in the circumstances portrayed in SR, with an Act of Congress involved?

Uh, there's no chance in hell people wouldn't know.

Also, there's a fundamental difference between Gitmo and the Internments (and, by the way, the camps in SR).

Gitmo is happening against NON-Americans.

The Internments happened against Americans, as is the similar situation in SR's case.

No, we're not doing that again. Nobody would stand for it.

Finally, there's something altogether different.

Throughout SR (I believe in SR3, most significantly, though the book's nowhere near me at the moment), it's basically said that the Native American camps were basically death camps.

Now, does anybody actually see that happening, ever, in the US?

1 person =/= 2 million plus.

If we're going to discuss whether this would be accepted though, look at Thomas' dissents in the internment cases, specifically Padilla, where he deferred completely to the Executive asserting its own authority to do whatever it wanted to (specifically in arresting a US citizen on US soil and "disappearing" him for 3 years now). Now consider that like I said all afternoon, SCOTUS in SR would be a majority of people to the hard right of him. In SR... I'd say it's possible, because it'd be legal.

You know, like it was in Germany.

Also, let's not forget that the Court said that the government had to charge him or release him a year ago. Nothing has happened. Anything is possible under the right circumstances. The Re-Education Camps are possible. Unlikely, unnecessary, and a tremendously awful plot device, but possible.

As a political event and within the context of all of the other political events that occurred from 2000-09, it was likely done for many of the same reasons as was done to the Japanese--not for security, but for land. Remember that they had been in conflict with the government for years by 2009 over the Resource Rush and the sale of tribal lands to corps for exploitation. The Lone Eagle incident was a terrific opportunity to move them all off land that the US was gleefully selling off to the corps during the Resource Rush. For their own security and the security of the public, they were removed (like they were in the 1800s) because it would be a lot more difficult politically to abdicate the government's trust relationship with the tribes and the agreements to provide them reservations, but to "secure" them and to "re-educate" them... Yeah, it's possible.

*shivers* Yeah, its rough in those casinos

Just kidding there, I know that the reservation are bad in some areas today - but the 'Soverign nation' and gambling in states where it is illegal is crap and it irks me.

Sorry for the derailment, back to the topic. Nothing to see here......

Regardless of the semantics, given the current-day politics in this country, it's not hard for me to imagine an angry American public looking the other way to a few thousand Native Americans with suspected terrorist ties being kept in camps, especially if those camps are run by extraterritorial entities.

EDIT: And on the casino comment, it's true that a handful of tribes live quite well off the gambling loophole (personally, I think they deserve the loophole, we Europeans screwed them pretty solid a couple centuries ago). But it's not the majority, not even close. And it's heavily divided the Native American community to the point where tribes hire lobbyists to make sure the states do not allow other tribes to open up a casino, because that would be competition. So one tribe lives in poverty while it's neighbor does well.

...because as we all know, the tribes used to live in perfect harmony with the environment and each other before the white man came around.

I disagree there Veracusse, you are out of order. Ive roleplayed a lot of systems over the last 15 years, and SR is a hell of a lot more complicated than just "reading the rulebook". I expect you to flame into me for being stupid, if your responses to weblife are anything to go by
As i see it the heart of weblifes comments is that a "streamlined" new rule set may not be a bad thing (if done well). Less time cross referencing rules and more roleplaying without losing a persons ability to be skillful/have options in combat etc.
Now im saying all this with a reference to that :-

1) Yes SR is the best RPG ive ever played from story line to dice pools/rules
2) It is a very complicated system to learn fully
3) Some of the people on this forum who know the rules inside out may not see them as complicated anymore
4) In an ideal world i would not want a whole new system as i now know SR3 pretty well.

And:-

1) Fanpro are not out to destroy the game or its fanbase.
2) Yes, they are streamlining the rules ( those of u who want to call it "dumbing down" without actually seeing what they produce, then fine), but in my mind if done well could be quite exciting.
3) SR4 is not just a new game. Im sure they are trying to make the rules easier, less bloated, and more consise, and at the same time continuing the whole history, feel and mythos of the world the same.
4) Staying with SR3 means the death of the world, as the number of players dwindle and its not worth them producing any more products. With SR4 they open up a whole new chance at new players, who can go cool i like the feel, setting and rules of this game... without having to a) find a copy of the handbook... let alone the other books (which in england even the best roleplaying shops have little or no copies) b) learn all the rules in their complicated state, or feel they have to have 10 or so other books just to feel that they are part of our complex world.

In my mind they are trying to keep the worlds history, feel AND whilst changing the rules essentially, keep current players happy, and at the same time appeal to new players.... which i see is the only way SR will continue.
Bashing the Developers or the playtesters is not helping anyone.... yes its impossible for them to make everyone happy (and believe me im not overjoyed at some of what LITTLE ive seen), but lets see what they produce.
In my mind theres getting a little too much we are dumpshock, we are the game... its not broken why fix it.... fanpro are idiots out to ruin the game/rip us off and take our money... anyone who dares suggest the new edition may be ok must get trolled.

I would suggest trying a bit more to look from the outside world and see that they are not trying to destroy SR, but doing there best to keep it going and improve it.... both for new players and old.

Doesn't mean they won't. I think most people are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're not malicious (I certainly don't think they are, there are people involved with FanPro that I respect greatly as people). If you think just not being out to destroy the game is enough to make a good new edition, well, I don't know what to say.

I agree that it could be. What you're missing is that a lot of the "dumbing down" comments come in direct response to what we have been shown about what they're producing.

And you think that SR3 didn't have the same design goals in mind?

Congratulations, you've just declared that one of the few successful RPGs is dying without anything to back your point up. Moreover, there are more than a few of us who are in favour of a 4th edition without necessarily being fans of this fourth edition. Take a look back at what people were saying when the news just came out. I think you'll find that a lot of naysayers now weren't naysayers then.

~J

But most of us aren't "anti-change." We're "anti-these-changes-we've-heard-about-so-far." It's not like we were all sitting around waiting for anyone to propose any change, and then throwing poop at them like monkies. Quite a few of us were excited about the new edition right up until they started telling us what was changing.

There's a difference -- a huge one! -- between being "anti-change" and "not liking these changes, specifically."

Do I have to?

(and I'm saying that seriously, it's happened to me before), but I didn't actually see anything other than "resistance to change is close-minded" in his post, making it hard to see it as anything other than a troll. You're right, I'm probably overreacting and will try to tone it down, but it seems like at times there's an assumption that there can't possibly be a logical reason for negativity regarding SR4.

I suppose there are also political considerations that I should probably weed out. I'm less likely to attack someone who is echoing my overall sentiment even if they're not being productive while doing so because, despite the fact that we have nothing to do with each other, it still looks like dissent within the ranks. This is not a positive tendency and I'll try to avoid it in the future.

Critias covered my other point. While you're correct in that it may "seem" anti-change, being misrepresented is generally something that tweaks most people, and I suppose I'm overly sensitive to it. There have been a lot of straws lately, but I suppose it's time to drop some of them off somewhere.

~J