Oh, well I meant that his suggestion is not as simple as just saying, "You have 6 skills to use magic. None of them can exceed 6 (as per the chargen system they've already mentioned). Have at it" vs. linking them to the Magic attribute.

Great... The Grade 10 Initiate doesn't even need to have a Sorcery skill to do anything. That's pretty dumb.

Well, streamlining now seems to include making a fifteen-page character sheet for all your skills.

Do not assume my heavy questioning stands in for a value judgment. I am indifferent to these ideas. If done well, they'd be great. However, if done poorly...

Right now most of my questions involve Rob's references to "legacy systems" and "complex mechanics" and things that are apparently Super Evil and Sucky™ in SR3 that have been around since SR1 or 2, but yet aren't important enough to actually enumerate a single one. I have no clue where Rob's coming from with these comments, and if anyone else did that I'd be all over his shit, too.

Not me. Perhaps that's why I can't appreciate his references to problems that apparently everyone can see just fine.

Well, like you said... If I didn't care to conjure, I'd play a Sorceror Adept.

Like Computers?

But they won't be rendered obsolete. They'll just be rendered less powerful or insanely powerful in how they are to allocate SR3 Sorcery to the SR4 Sorcery skills.

I wonder if this means even Hermetics will get dice pool bonuses, or whether they'll just disappear.

Makes traditions easier when there's no real problem trying to fit the existing Traditions into a creation system (e.g., like how a comprehensive Totem creation system can't make several totems without handwaving or introducing skewing elements).

But my favorite part is that now I might be able to make up whatever spirits I want with whatever stats and powers I want and make them exclusive to the CD2.0 Tradition. Yay!

THere have been guidelines for Totem Creation since Awakenings. But a system with numbers and values for dice mods doesn't work because of Totems like Horse who get to take Movement as a Metamagic.

But that's Totem creation. This is the more meta Tradition creation, like when they created Voudoun, Wujen, Path magic, etc.

Ordinarily, as an intergral member of a highly secretive RPG engine design team, I'm not supposed to let cats out of the bag. Particularly large, scary alley cats that go by the name of 'Centering'.

But.

To answer your question, we removed centering completely. We thought it was pretty silly, actually, and only made sense after a dozen or so cocktails, a few thai sticks, and a fucking half a pound of fine china.

Also, we took out the 'Cat' option from the Totem list much to the dismay of alot angsty goth kids. While the overall originality of character concepts should rise dramatically, we are a bit concerned about a backlash of depressing poetry.

-RM

"I haven't figured out how to say FUCK YOU politely."

Heh, yeah... Like Goth kids reflect in any way aspects of the Cat Totem.

Few and very high-end ones with powerful enemies who are also incredibly, devilishly intelligent (and intelligently played). A PC like this could have run Brainscan alone if not scaled and broken the game when they're supposed to be captured and hooked up to Deus' UV realm but instead tear a massive hole into the side of the Arc and download Deus without anyone touching them.

In those cases, the games are more ... interesting and story-driven.

So you've never tried to reduce the penalties to cast a spell against a TN of 20, or shrug off drain when you're casting several powerful spells to cover your team's back? I guess we run different games then.

Adding the artistic skill to your dice roll just makes your magic more artsy. How it relates to the magical aspects of Centering do not compute to me.

I don't understand this at all, unless you're suggesting that all of the Traditions should be virtually identical. I liked the original creation of Voudoun as a separate Tradition with its own aspects that required it to fill a good chunk of Awakenings. MitS just screwed it up by trying to pigeonhole it into the Totem/Idol structure--probably more of that "streamlining" that people like to talk about. In exchange, they completely ruined all of the good of Voudoun. It's not like they've been adding Traditions after Traditions. Idols have been treated like Totems since they were introduced in 1994 (in the U.S.). But Druids have been shoehorned into Hermeticism and Totem magic (with their own Totems), All Western Theurgy was stuck in Hermeticism. Path magic hasn't changed much, nor should it really, in how it's used within the rules.

They could either create new rules for each Tradition or stick them in the Big Two, but I don't see how this, for example, created such an awful "legacy system" in the rules. Moreover, I don't see why they couldn't have fixed things in SR3 if it was so bad. It's not like they didn't try with some things. With this description, though, it seems more like Magic is going to be completely different and I have yet to see one reason why it should be.

Sorry, can't really catch the thougt you have. Can you explain it in other words, understandable for non-native english speakers?

The suggestion seemed to suggest treating magic like how knowledge skill points are allocated.

I think it defeats all the talk of "streamlining." It is easier to not touch that at all, and stick with the current rules for purchasing Active Skills at chargen.

Yeah, well... Your lack of comprehension is not my problem.

With re: to Anchoring, because SR3 "fixed" it, and by fixed I mean made much worse, which is the same thing as making non-active biomass astrally equivalent to air.

As for why they get their own rules... Because it's a whole different worldview. The entire Totem system is fucked simply because it rammed not just NA shamanism but all inidigenous "shamanism" into one system where everyone follows animal totem archetypes instead of how NA magical belief systems actually work. So unless they tear down Shamanism completely or eliminate it (which I doubt they will. Call it a complete and utter distrust of every effing thing they do and their intentions) then it will still remain a fucked up system if for no other reason that because it plays a minor part in magical world view but has been, and will continue to be, one of the Big Two Traditions. So if there are "legacy system" problems that they're going to "fix" then the best thing they could do was fix Shamanism by eliminating it or reduce it from its pedestal as one of only two Traditions you can play--a system that was flawed from conception and is why other Traditions exist (beginning with Druids, then Idols, Path of the Wheel, Loa, and Wujen) to reflect the fact that in the bigger picture Hermeticism and Shamanism are far from the only magical systems in SR.

This isn't a "problem." It's a damn good thing, and when MitS did a 180 and completely neutered Voudoun it was a failure on their part to make things better.

But we're talking about mechanics that were added on top of each other, like... Like... See, I don't know what they are talking about. Unless they want to make summoning uniform across every Tradition now, and that's the only example I can think of. I also think that would be a very bad idea because the summoning of different spirits should at least reflect that they are different spirit types.

Yes. The existing system is more intuitive to me than just neutering any mechanical differences between the Traditions or whatever nonsense they're going to do to Magic to dumb it down.

Weird - read the text though - it's different. With someone elses sigs.

I think the board is going mad....

But I didn't post those two funky looking posts.

Oh, yeah. That's an encouraging sign that they feel the need to bash the product that they had some sort of a hand in building unless MitS was written late one night by Steve and Mike and pushed out the door without anyone else's knowledge (specifically, that of the 90 playtesters) and that they are washing their hands of having that taint, but also the taint of Paul Hume's work in SR1/2 and the original design team.

Just because MitS is a poorly-written sourcebook doesn't mean we should burn down the entire system.

Thanks a lot

I don't think streamlining means having only a handful skills. Streamlining can also mean imo that basic skills like firearms, spellcasting or decking are split up into sub-skills, treating every skill group the same way.

You mean like have a list of broad skills, that are expensive, concentrations that are a little less, and specializations that are cheap?

Yeah,.....That'd be cool.

LOL, this really sums up my confidence in the new system. Simplified and streamlined my ass.

Sorry. State secrets. We can't tell you. If we did, we'd have to kill you.

That was one of the most rediculous things I've ever read related to SR4.

More efficient system is yet to be determined. Potentially more effecient. Possibly more efficient. *shrug*

And we do know some things, yeah, it's not much, but so far it's enough. We get totally different rules, and a setting change.

The rework of the magic system mentioned today is another potential indicator of a setting change.

Like I said earlier; Should we start pitching new names for this new game?? That may be helpful.

Unfortunetly, like you sad, all this 'ranting' may not be constructive, but sitting around saying, "All is sweetness and light. Everyhting is fine" Isn't helpful either. We all realize that the Devs have made up their mind, We're just hoping against hope that we'll get through to them. Doubtful. But it makes us feel better.

"The sky is falling, the sky is falling!"

I was refering to the SR3-updated version of the spells, and the ones added in MitS.

My god man, look at the sprawl catch-all that Manipulations has become. It became so big that it grew sub-catagories. Sub-catagorization that appears to have little to no game consequences.

Those kind of characters are going to be redos. Personally all along i've been expecting that anything over a couple hundred karma are going to be redos. I wouldn't even bother counting karma when rebuilding them. Just add and subtract as needed till it looks right.

Sort of like those "How to build a [Movie Character Du'jour]" threads that pop up periodically on the main DSF.

That's an awakened PC, right? How many Grades do those characters have?

Holy brain stuck in SR3, Batman. Within that paradigm you can have a very wide range of weightings for things. For starters given that the Magic attribute is variable at character creation just the part specifying that a character is awakened needs a redo.

Further do you really think that they would go through the time and effort to shakedown all parts of the system but leave character generation intact to the point that you can actually mix in SR3 chargen numbers????

That said it is quite possible with a larger group of skills that awakened characters are going to have specialize more (like gun slingers did going from SR2 to SR3), or cover all magical catagories but be sub-par in them all. By specialization i mean either specialize in a particular aspect of magic (no more casting & conjuring godlings, you have to start as either a casting godling or a conjuring godling) or specialize in magical skills to the determent of all other character aspects (casting & conjuring idiot savant).

Personally i don't see that as patently bad at all.

More than your average GD according to DotSW.

The problem is that they're not building some PC to be a best fit to someone else's conception. These are their own PCs with 15 years of backstory and history to them. It's disingenuous to ask them to build a "best fit" PC within the scope of stats that the devs for years have tried to pretend don't exist. There really isn't much of a conception in SR that you can have an Initiate who can run out of canon Metamagics.

Sounds like the character has kinda out grown [canon] SR3 too? What does the PC actually do to pass the time?

Well, the way I see it it could go a few ways. One you don't need the skill centering. you just need the art skill that is linked to it. Such as singing, debating dancing or what not.

Or you could use centering like adepts, and just be thankful that they are least still giving you cake with your sodomy.

Ahh, been looking forward to this.

Works for me. I'm especially interested in that Ritual Spellcasting skill... perhaps we'll finally see ritual magic get a bit more attention than before.

Very interesting. I'm going to make a wild-ass assumption and say that metamagic like Centering or Geasa will simply add dice to whatever skill you're using when it's in effect.

Thank (insert deity here)!

Hmmm. I'll have to wait and see here, but I'm really liking what I see so far.

Geasa? Oh, heh. Yeah. I forgot that some people don't just take the hit to magic, but have GMs who allow them take easily-circumvented impositions on their abilities to perform magic to be able to act at their full potential.

Then could you translate it from crazy?

I can cite my own personal madness inspired by Shadowrun's magic system. Rob's right about it accumulating "rules detritus like a ship gathers barnacles." He's also right about the problems inherent in it being a "legacy system." I don't think I can even count the number of times, as a freelancer, I was driven to near madness trying to fit a regional belief system into Shadowrun's rigidly limited magic system. SR1, and due to legacy, SR2 and SR3 revolved around one interpretation of hermeticism (inspired by Western European tradition) and one interpretation of shamanism (inspired by Native American tradition). And they hardwired those two systems right into the rules. So anything that came after had to either fit into their two limited definitions of hermeticism/shamanism or it had to add systems. Many didn't fit very well, and so we added exceptions and systems for Voudoun, Wuxing, Wicca, etc. And with each one we added, the rules got more out of hand. New spirit types were added, new types of foci were added, new mechanics for summoning spirits were added, and so on. All because we couldn't fit what we wanted to do into what we were originally given and were forced to either shortchange the accuracy or add systems.

So if SR4 makes for a more flexible system right out of the gate, that would make me happy.

No it isn't. The earth is rising!

Huh? You are the one that knows the players. Do they post on DSF?

BTW all the massive Karama, pre-SR3 PCs i know retired some time back from active play. The only time they show up at the table they are unto NPC gods, nearly statless (although one, non-awakened, got roasted good when a trunkload of autocannon ammo and grenades cooked off).

Then play Urban Arcana. That's not SR, never has been. in the SR Setting magic was a rarity. Yeah as PC's in the world we see more of it than a regualr citizen. With what we are assuming; that with magic being bought in stages, maybe that'll mean you can have someone that dabbles in magic - magic will become much more common. Yeah, that will eventually happen anyway with the rise in mana levels, but not in just a few years, it should be taking hundreds of years.

IF they make the point buy system completely linear then yes, You could set the points at what ever power level you want.
And IF they provide guidelines for differing campaing levels; ie 100 for the ganger/street level campaign, 200 for the professional level (Similar to what we have now) and 300 for the prime runner campaign.

It is a WAG, but everything points to them changing to a lower powered campaign. But we won't know till they either say something, or we get the book.

Well that just some of us speaking our peace, some of us are speaking positively about the change. It seems like 'reletless negativity' becuase those of us that oppose the changes presented to us seem to be in the majority. Those of you thta are positive about it either aren't posting, or aren't here

All right, I can see how that would be a problem for freelancers. Less so for players, though, as they less often come up with new regional belief systems and insist upon them being viable in SR. So I guess some of FAQ5 is comprehensible from the standpoint of a developer who doesn't want their rules to tie their hands.

Voudoun have totem bonuses and conjure as if they were conjuring nature spirits. They cast like everyone else. Wuxing--you mean Wujen, right?--summon spirits of the elements and use libraries and circles. Wicca are hermetic or shamanic as they see fit. That's it in terms of basic mechanics. How is that out of hand? Maybe it's not what the developers wanted, but as a player it's hardly out of hand.

There are new types of spirits with new powers. In this way, yes, different magical traditions do have some differences. If they're all the same, why even bother making the distinction? Just say, "This is a magician," and they can associate whatever regional flavor they want, which is completely meaningless except as flavor. That's pretty dull, and could be done even more than it was in SR3. No need to change everything. Just say, "They summon nature spirits and call them something else."

The problem comes only if you want a regional variant to have unique and different powers. And then you're really required to have different rules. So it's not as though you're going to get away from having different rules. If you can think of them all at the beginning, it's easier to find them, which is nice. But that's a matter of consolidation not "OMG, look at all the barnacles!". The rules won, in this case, and the added rules detritus was minimal (at the expense, perhaps, of the setting that the author really wanted to create).

Er, so you would prefer to have a system where every supplement was a piece of fiction only, and didn't introduce any new rules? That's not a very good business decision, if the profusion of D&D rulebooks is any indication.

So I'm still puzzled. My best guess is that the developers decided that they are tired of the magic setting they have devised for SR1-3, and want to revise the setting a lot. Don't forget: in SR1-3, most magicians were either hermetic or shamanic; one could summon elementals and bind them, while the other could summon nature spirits on the fly; one studied in libraries and the other in lodges; and you know, that was about it. If there are piles of viable traditions that warrant changing the basic mechanic to remove these distinctions, then it's a major change in the setting. I'm not saying this is bad, mind you. Its goodness or badness depends on how well it's implemented, both in fiction and in rules. But in that case the FAQ doesn't really explain why there is a change. I'd say instead:

"Over the years, many magical traditions have been added, and squeezed into the distinction of Hermetic and Shamanic magic, even when it's an awkward fit. We think we can better incorporate a wide range of magical traditions without the old emphasis on the Hermetic/Shamanic split. We've redesigned the magic rules so that each tradition, from Wicca to Voudoun to Druidic magic, can be as important as any other, using a common set of rules."

Something like this I could believe. I still don't see the barnacles.

Well, maybe our negativity is spreading to the developers, or maybe it was always there, just unstated. I get the feeling, with all the changes, that the developers had some pretty negative things to say internally about SR3. So, you know, it's sort of fair game.

If SR3 is to be changed, expect squawking. If it is to be changed to something that seems, on its face, to have serious problems or to remove aspects of the game that some people dearly love, expect a lot of squawking. People make a fuss when things change, but they make a much bigger fuss when they change in ways they don't like. It's a good idea to be aware of what they dislike, especially if you want to keep them as customers. The customer doesn't always know what he or she wants, but not paying attention is never a good idea.

Actually many of the D&D books add scant few rules. Mostly just ficiton and items that fit within the existing rules. There are the campaign books that add some more rules stuff, but even then mostly add items that fit within the existing rules (Green Ronin's Freeport is an example of that).

Then there are books that are more akin to rules replacements. They are built to contruct a divergent, sometimes very different world. The SR equivalent would be moving completely outside the current SR timeline, planet, etc. You need a huge customer base to support something like that, larger than SR is likely to see anytime soon.

The problem SR is going to run into, and has run into, trying to duplicate that is that the modern world is relatively well known to the players. So players overall tend to notice things that are not as they are IRL more. To help suspend belief the you can try tend to try model it closer. But doing that usually has the requirement of making more one-of rules.

Never assume anything.

If a contractor's building my house, goddammit I am going to make sure that he puts the roof on and not take it on some assumption that he will.

I'm not assuming anything about SR4, but it would be irresponsible of me not to point out holes, omissions, innuendo, and questions that arise from the FAQs.

I try not to imagine my gaming in a sexual frame.

I really try not to.

But if you've seen the fuel injector, and you know somwthig about fuel injectors, then yeah, you can make a judgement call about the car.

If you see that the injector is the wrong size for the car, is not shaped quite right, and/or built buy a third world company that has a history of shoddy workmanship - then yeah, you can assume that there will be some problems with the rest car.

The same is true for the game. I have seen very little I like - neverminding the fact that I hated the idea of SR4 in the first place - the system mechanics and setting changes they are showing us is just awful.

To ride the metaphor into the dirt......a lot of what i see is people commenting on the appropriateness of the fuel injector in the wrong context. They are trying to put the new fuel injector in the old car and screaming that it doesn't fit.

Just an aside, given your strong prejudice against SR4 if i was the developer i'd be inclined to put less weight into what you have to say. Not totally ignore, but since you are likely to be a total stalwart you take yourself right out of the market.

It's messed up in what way? It doesn't fit in the old engine?

Tonight @ 9: When Metaphors Attack!!!

Trust me, I'm well aware of that fact.

I've been a SR fan since it came out of the warehouse. I've read all the novels and played a lot in the last 15 or so years. I'll continue to reead the books, but it is unlikely that I will change to this new game they are making.

Instead of calling it SR4, it should be Shadowrun II, First Edition. Becuase that is what it looks like we are getting.

That's sort of what I'm hoping for. It'll still be Shadowrun, but with enough improvement to the rules to make it worthwhile buying new books.

Shadowrun: Reloaded?