Well, making traditions more flexible while not overly complicating rules in itself is a good idea. It remains to be seen how it is implemented, but that's the second instance where the changes revealed aren't totally horrific to me.

Now, splitting the magic skills and the possible undoing of initiate grades and redoing of metamagic, on the other hand, sounds like it will screw up all high-level magican characters beyond any hope of conversion, and boy, that would suck ass.

frostPDP, given that they're completely restructuring how magic works--to include Magic being bought as if it were any other attribute--why would you assume it costs 30bp to be awakened? heck, why would assume that 30bp even represents the same relative value that it has in SR3?

Yeah, it'd be streamlined if it's bought like every other Attribute, negating any need for more chargen rules.

Hey, so are we going to get an infinite number of spirits now, or one group of spirits? How are their attributes determined? What's the difference between them? What about Free Spirits, Insect Spirits, Toxic Spirits, Shedim, Wraiths, Salamanders, Nomads, Faeries, the Wild Hunt, etc.?

If you have that problem, use the "roll a bunch of dice, quick" method for astral quests instead of playing out scenes.

You can already have an exorcist by specializing in banishing. Granted, you can't have a pure exorcist; someone cannot be completely hopeless at conjuring and yet a master banisher. I'm not sure whether this will change in SR4, though--with attributes adding to all skills, one would think that conjuring would still be decent even without skill.

MFB, because generally when a game proposes there will be some form of "Conversion" for old characters, there has to be some relative comparison between old and new.

Ex: Designing a Street Mage with one system and another might give you slightly different results. That's something of a mistake, but it happens. With a small difference, that's fine.

I figure there will be some similarities in SR4. I figure conversion is possible, thus making my Sorcery 7 character the equivalent of a 7 in the three new skills. Minor power tweaking aside, if SR4 drastically cuts a Mage's power it's pulling the rug out from under the game balancing of everything in the existing plot.

I suppose the greatest thing I have is a fear that nonsense skill divisions will undermine an operating system that works fine. Your typical combat mage isn't going to focus much in ritual sorcery, so "game balance" won't be achieved in that way.

Furthermore the breaking up of firearms into various skills wasn't done properly. It seems to me (again, drawing on various new-age stuff of today and yesteryear) that the sorcery aspect of the new FAQ looks pretty decent, though I see "counterspelling" as simply using your mana to defeat someone else's control of their own sorcery. The Conjuring, however, looks vaguely broken. I'm no expert, but wouldn't the binding be done with the summoning itself?? I mean, unless you're an idiot who enjoys having his tools eat him at first oppertunity...

But I haven't seen a game mechanic yet, so you have a point that I am relating things back to SR3. That's all we really have to relate it to, considering they haven't said how magic is going to work precicely. Still, I'm on record as not completely trusting it.

The thing about the polls.. is they don't help really. People may have said 'yes' or 'maybe' and had it later change to no.. it's been a quite a while. I don't even remember what I answered.

I do know that I'm firmly in the 'no' now. My group isn't switching, and I don't like what I've seen. It's looking like an amalgamation of D&D and WoD.

WoD rolling, D&D-esque 'so simple a monkey could play it' and metamagic('feats'). I'm just not seeing any of the richness of the Shadowrun rules.

Disclaimer: This is all my opinion. Those who have more optimism, feel free to continue to keep it. Also, however, feel free to not try and start an argument with me over it.

frostPDP, you're still making a lot of assumptions about how the chargen system will work. there's nothing to say that being a full mage will have the equivalent cost in SR4 that it did in SR3, or that skills will have the same equivalent cost, or anything.

in other words, i really doubt straight conversion will be possible at all, given the type of changes they've been talking about in the FAQ.

I am getting the feeling that there will be a lot of shoe-horning to get converted SR3 characters to comply with SR4.

I could see converting old magical skills to new magical skills based on scaled point buy costs from SR3 to SR4. And maybe specializations will have a weighting other than 1:1 for conversion purposes.

Unfortunately, I am just whistling in the dark. To quote Sgt. Schultz from Hogan's Heroes, "I know NOTHINK!"

MFB, my friend, I still think that whatever changes they make, Shadowrun will remain Shadowrun. Otherwise, it'll be Shadowrun + WoD + D&D in which case it isn't SR.

If straight conversion isn't possible, that would be a shame considering the leadups to the 2070 thing. It would actually be a horrible marketing ploy, since it would shut out any chance of me using 'Ol Bill as anything more than an NPC in the new world.

I don't expect perfect chargen or conversion, but I expect something that is recognizable. Otherwise I have to stand pretty firmly in the no department - The changes and streamlining are clever, but the game isn't the same.

Unless you wanna try to say Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights are the same, because simply changing the basic game format doesn't change the game. Which is clearly untrue.

even if SR is still SR, that doesn't mean that direct conversion will be possible--and even if direct conversion is possible, it certainly doesn't mean that characters built in SR3 will be balanced for play after being converted to SR4.

Hell, we don't have enough information or hard numbers to know if an unmodified pedestrian is playable after conversion. I guess us poop throwers will get our exercise until it comes out in August.

That aside, the FAQs are vague enough to inflict apoplectic seisures on those of us who are following with a critical eye to the effects the change will bring. Don't get me wrong, I like knowing something (if only to have more poop to throw), but a little something can be more painful then a lot of nothing.

And don't forget, we asked for a FAQ blog, we should be glad they listened enough to provide us with one. And no, I didn't say you had to be satisfied with the amount of information we are getting, just glad that we are being heard in some small way.

By "board" I was intending the "Shadowrun 4" sub-forum, which i feel pretty confident is here to talk about SR4. Call me Sherlock Holmes, but i was tipped off by the forum title subtext "Discuss the upcoming Shadowrun 4 release, to be released at Gencon Indy 2005."

Ah, I see. Well, some of us are still hoping that when the time comes we might not have to stay on our ship, and ignoring the problem won't make it go away.

Most likely neither will talking about it, but it's a better shot.

~J

Reason??

They are tearing down my favorite rpg, and building something else.

Sure, they've only shown us bits and pieces, but those bits and pieced don't 'feel' like SR.

Blast me, flame me, call me a poo flinging monkey, thats how I feel.

And I come here to discuss it. To learn about it. To understand how others feel about it. And discuss it some more.

In other words, to throw poo in the limelight?

Maybe if, through discussion, the developers end up understanding the concerns of people like Eldritch, they'll be able to make a product that Eldritch does recognize as SR and which will make him change his mind.

Eldritch--you wouldn't be opposed to that, would you? Granted, having to buy new books is annoying, but if the product was actually good, and actually SR (albeit with a modified set of rules that kept most of the good flavor of SR and dropped some of the things that are awkward), it'd be worth buying, right?

I'm certainly not saying that the devs are trying to do this--much less that they've tried and succeeded--but until the book is in print, some of us can hope that they will, and thus discussion is not merely illuminated high-velocity primate excrement.

Well yeah, it would be worth buying.

I will continue to buy the novels.

And I'm sure I'll buy the Almanac mentioned several weeks back (If it gets published in English )

So, no, I'm not a total loss as a customer. But the rules I've seen so far - albiet just a small picture of the new rules - really are not that impressive. (For Shadowrun That is) The book would have to be very impressive at this point to woo be over. But I won't discount that it's possible.

Cause if I do see it, and like it, and buy it, and play it...Well I'd have to change my handle here at DS, and that's just a big pain in the butt.

I haven't decided if I'm going to SR4 or not. If I see the rules and they uber-roxor, we'll do char conversions before the 2070 deadline and roll from there. If they really suck, when we get to 2070 then we'll upgrade.

Totally trashing Mages doesn't seem to make sense. You want game-balancing, that's fine, but totally changing things so Mages go from one function to another is destroying SR. Literally speaking - Shadowrun isn't the same because of the Decker-Hacker whatever changes, let alone mages as well?

But that's me. That's why we can discuss this - To learn more, to plan our next moves with our games, and to move on or not as we choose. Discussing the SR3 to 4 issues is the best thing we can do to remain addicted.

if you change how the world works, you necessarily need to change how the characters that interact with that world work. their function will, most likely, pretty much remain the same--but the way they fill that function will change, just as the rest of the rules change.

Because some of our parents didn't hug us enough as children, and we feel a need to punish ourselves sometimes.

I wouldn't know. I'm an idiot.

Kage, I mis-spoke. By upgrade, I meant "upgrade the metaplot without updating the rest."

The way I see it, the game of Shadowrun isn't made up with statistics. In most ways, I could use D&D and some ad-hoc DMming to create a Shadowrun-Like world. Shadowrun is a game I love because of the metaplot. I know how big of a geek I am.

To radically alter the way characters function, of course, necessitates a change in the metaplot's methodology. A huge change in the metaplot's integrity, at least for me (and I'm sure for many, many others), ruins it.

To quote Strong Bad, "A one that isn't cold is scarcely a one at all."
To borrow from him, "A Shadowrun that isn't Shadowy or Runny is not a Shadowrun."

Which ironically makes sense. If you don't keep stealthy or get the hell out when you can, you're probably dead...

[Edit-Jutsu] Yes, Eyeless, I am bile-filled. But if that means I am sometimes respectable, then I see it as an improvement LOL I think the reason I am "reacting to the unknown" is because the known doesn't portend entirely (Not that some of the changes don't make sense - Some are very good) well; not because what is there is great and I am terrified they'll botch.

"if you're shot, you die--that's the reality"

Are you sure only light pistols do exists ?
By the way the rest of your statement is correct, I still do not understand how so much people argue rules have no impact on background ...

I hope that in new background, contact weapon won't seems to be as ridiculous as before ... and runner to be less over-specialized (as in sr3 the only power path is to set up the char with only 6 in his score).

I would like to point out that the person running the game has a lot to do with the perception of the game as dark and gritty (or Shadowy and Runny as the case may be).

I don't forsee the changes to the application of magical skills as breaking the game's overall feel just yet. The feeling I get from the devblog is that magicians will be much more able to specialize, and may need to specialize earlier in order to have significant power early on in that character's life.

There have been a few threads lamenting the fact that a mage with 300 Karma is more potent than a Sammie with 300 Karma since I strated lurking here, so making mages spread it out for balance is not all bad to me.

Sleep deprevation/insomnia. Being up at 5 AM after three hours at a pool hall and two at a coffee house makes for a rather poor post, as does six hours of sleep and a very rude awakening I've posted elsewhere about.

To try to put my statement in a better context - The gist is correct that SR can exist without following the same rules it does today. The proof is fairly tangible - This is 3E, but much of the source material I've referenced from other versions (especially still-useful things) has the same feel to it because the systems, though different, are very similar. With the time-line there have been some (not too many) advances, some changes, and that's good.

Now we're looking ahead to an age of glorious wireless internet. That's cool. Calling them "Hackers" is a little un-Shadowrunny, but we get the point. Its a new world, and I can only assume there will be a decent back-story to the 2065 crash. If not, then its probably just silly. Why? Its simply not necessary to have a 5-year conversion of most systems happen solely as a result of a catastrophe. When the Matrix gives out, I highly doubt the world just sits back, smiles, and waits for things to be fixed. I'd presume it goes apey. I could be wrong, but the vibe of the game and its "humanitarian nature" seems to scream "this can't end well." If you want this change, however, it can be done with SoTA stuff rather than a whole new paradigm of internet stuff which, unless I'm wrong, we don't know much about.

The in-game effects of things which are simply rule changes, such as breaking up skills into mini-skills (ex: Firearms to about 6 different skills) tend to force in-game changes without out-of-game reason. On New Years Day 2070, my character shouldn't just lose effectiveness for no reason. He shouldn't go from "Oh look, there's a friendly group of gangers waiting to see a Fireball" to "...Crap, they wanna see what?! I can't do that anymore!"

So perhaps its xenophobia or the appearance of changes that work. Perhaps I've seen what happens with riddiculously high stats becoming the norm, as in my groups Vampire game - Nobody bothers to get skills. Worst of all, since I've seen nothing about chargen and have to presume that Shadowrun will remain Shadowrun no matter what, I have to presume that -some- level of translation (be it my C average in Spanish I and II worth - Rough but acceptable) will be possible.

Character sheets, in the long run, are not characters. They do, however, somewhat limit what you can and cannot do. A character with a Car skill of 1....Ain't a race-car driver. He can try, but chances are he'll wrap himself around a tree. Rifles 1 doesn't make you a sharp-shooter, it makes you a boyscout who's spent one too many hours on a rifle range. (And whatever DID happen to the Boy Scouts in 2060?)

A small change to my charsheet won't make my character a different person. It would be excusable by saying "Well, the power-rating system is different so he's just as strong, just not as strong as others, which we knew thus no big deal." Furthermore, breaking it up so that a Sorcery of 6 is now "equivalent" to three ranks of each new skill is fine. If three is average and people with every other skill keep their 6's, whatever the new equivalency might be, you have a small issue of character changes brought on by rule changes.

Since it seems universal, the rules should never force the characters or the game into a hole. The rules exist so we don't kill one another over our mountain dews (cokes, in my case) when one person thinks they did something and the other doesn't - Everyone has that least common denominator of "roll 6 dice against your five and see what happens." You know your armor class and the others' attack bonuses and you know how much damage an Ares Predator does in comparison to some light-pistol garbage.

Unless your group decides that one or the other does more or less damage. Which is fine. That's why rules are guidelines. For those who prefer to stay close to the guidelines, we shouldn't be punished with a reworking of our gameplay. I don't need to buy Shadowrun version anything - I can go 100% diceless and make stuff up. The rules are there to make this process more fun and simple, so why make my gaming complex and my character someone he's not? Anyway I'm rambling. Night, back to bed.