i'm going to just copy and paste a post i made on Shadowland a few days ago. it says just about everything i want to say.

Whoa.

and

Wow.


(Heh, not a CD2.0 Wow, an Eldritch wow )

Looks like I'm more with Goodman than with you, mfb, concering my understanding of rules and RPG world interaction.

But many, many thanks for your comments anyway. They really help in figuring out what SR4 will be like.

Thanks very much for your perspective. I feel sad for you, having input but no power over the cahnges to the game you love.

Thank you mfb for being up-front and delivering the news as you see it. Like you I think that rules are an integral part of an RPG, not just the setting.

This is very depressing

Ouch

An informed and dissapointed second opinion. Pretty much what I've been dreading.I'm already tring to think of ways to make a bastardized combination of SR 3 and 4 rules now.

I agree that roll- hit -damage is not what I'm looking for in SR, and I'm pretty dissapointed to hear that's where it's going.Hopefull there's still some time for improvement. I have a bad feeling I'll be buying the new core book just to confirm that I don't really want it, and then spend the next years worth of rules books reverse engineering everything. fun...

Worst part is that up until now, I've been in the "wait patiently and see" camp. Think I might have to move my tent over near "dreading the fall". Hope it's not that bad.

After reading this thread I have come to two conclutions.

1. A real man can still cry.
2. I will not buy SR4, I will insted wait for my friends to buy it and then make fun of them for it.

P.S. This sucks.

I'm with PG on this one. I don't consider the dice mechanics to be a distinguishing feature of Shadowrun anymore then I do them to be a distinguishing feature of Axis and Allies.

Do I get to play a Troll? Can I have a cyber arm? Can I say "hoop" and "frag"? Why then I must be playing Shadowrun.

Not really.

That may be your opinion, which is equally as valid as my opinion, which is that Shadowrun is equal parts rules, and setting.

> SR4 is not finnished, games mecanics is pretty different from SR3 so all SR player can't be happy with the new version. However for me change I saw during playtest make me happy it was generaly things I'd like to see n SR so for me it's really good.
It's true that all isn't fixed and that we have a lot of work before the release however I'm confident in the dev team and other playtester to solve problem. because yes as I said, there are some problem but don't worry, we have many possibility. NDA exist also to not tell you bad ideas which can disgust you and that finaly isn't in the core book. Keep in mind that all you can read from playtester is a) a subjective point of biew and b) subject to changes before the release.
I can just say that I will surely prefer SR4 to SR3 but it's my point of view and assuming that some things will be fixed during the rest of the playtest ^^ So... wait and see and have your own judgement ^^

P.S. sorry for my english
> Daegann

Thank you for your input MFB. I respect your writing and with your help (and others by now) Im slowly going from the "wait and see" camp to the "Nope, this blows bubba the love troll" camp.

I agree with MFB. The dice mechanics are an integral part of the game. They set the Physics of the gaming world, the games lethality, and a variety of other things.

My opinion I guess coincides with Bigity and others: mechanics are important to a game insofar that mechanics can really change the feel of a game if they're done poorly. Take a look, for instance, at the current rules for spotting magic. The flavor text makes magic out to be subtle, that casting is really hard to notice unless you're really looking for it. The rules, however, make it only a little bit harder to notice than pointing a gun to someone's forehead and pulling the trigger.

Mechanics, IMO, are really only important if you screw them up. If the way you get something done through the game mechanics contrasts so completely with the way the game mechanics indicate that it is supposed to be done that it ruins the suspension of disbelief then you have a problem; otherwise they are pretty much fine. mfb's comments here indicate that the game mechanics, for him at least, actually impede with his enjoyment of the game. I picked up on two main objections here:

1) He says that the way modifiers are applied seem counterintuitive and arbitrary, that they "blur together."
2) He says that there is a general lack of situation-level tactics, that "there's very little thinking involved."

Of the two, it's the first that worried me the most, and is setting off big alarm bells in my head right now. The second may well just come down to a veteran's whining about the lack of tactical pool dice, something whose importance is debatable. The first, though--that the main dice mechanic is confusing at a fundamental level--is incredibly worrisome, and really needs to be brought to the powers-that-be in more detail. This is a hugely critical issue that I think would need to be dealt with before the game can be published.

I encourage mfb to really stress this one to the game developers, because if he's right and the core mechanic is confusing and counterintuitive that's going to basically make the game unplayable in a mass-market sense.

Hey Kage, do you accept paypal or credit card for SR3R? I'd like to pre-order now.

You are right - D20 mod has some magic/psi/eetc. Urban Arcana expands on it. Future has aliens, cyber, nanotech, bio tech, star ships etc. And they have a cybertech book on the horizon that'll have expended Cyber and VRNet rules.


No, I agree; SR is as much setting as rules. You could make a Sr like game with D20, but it would'nt have the same feel as SR. Mechanics are all different. ( Duh)

feel free to call me slow but i didnt know mfb was part of the playtest group...

I think the SR Troll was the hook that caught me on the game. The passage in the BBB written by the Troll was great, the art was great. I remember I wanted to figure out how Big a Troll really was. Turns out they can only fit through my front door sideways, and spend most of their time indoors hunched over.

You just get this great sense of playing a massive, fierce, hulking, scary, thing. Speaking of things, Troll vs The Thing... no contest.

Its true though that a lot of the themes of a game are determined by the mechanics. For example, SR has no morality mechanic whatsoever. Not even alignment. Karma can be used to reward good and bad, but it gives the Shadowrun universe a very capricious sense of what's right and wrong.

It sounds to me that they're sacrificing some of the gamist themes to expand on some of the role playing themes.

So Patrick loves SR4 and motor hates it. Gamers will be gamers. I read through the post but all I got from it is this :

He also stated that the matrix rules were neat, but not enough to make the difference.

Aye Jrayjoker... as mfb said there are some neat bits, and as i said before i dont care if the rules change as long as the feel for the world in terms of feeling remotely is consistant to the rules. New neat bits dont change the fact that from MFB says, if true, then SR is not SR anymore..... if a bullet cant kill, if you dont have a chance to hit someone in range, if you can walk the streets without any fear of death,.... thats not SR, thats a new game and the world background doesnt hold any water consistant with whats already been written.
Ive had a few beers and didnt explain that too well, but as mfb said.

I have been saying this from the beginning. This game is not being designed for us. They are not interested in our opinions or ideas about how Shadowrun is played or how it feels. They are after a piece of the D20 Market, and MFB's statement spells that out.

Man when I first heard about SR4 last year I was so stoked! It was gonna be great. The way SR3 was compared to SR2. But no. They got greedy and let their egos take over.

"Were a new company. Were not FASA and we need to prove it. So lets sweep everything FASA made under the rug and make a whole new system! Let's destroy everything original and great about the game to make our own system! Shadowrun is FanPro now! Yay."

This is so depresing. I kept hoping that the information I had was wrong, that it was somehow just some pre-ideas that where thrown out. But each faq confirmed what I had. Each one confirmed the utter disaster SR4 was turning out to be.

For those of you who feel that the mechanic has nothing to do with the game I think once you play this game you will see what we all mean when we say that. You think that as long as it's in the future and has trolls that it is Shadowrun.

This is just not true. There are many of us who have been playing since SR1 who have watched Shadowrun evolve, who have identified that barely perceptible thing that is Shadowrun. And now we are watching it get crushed under the weight of a new inept system.

Well all the staunch allies of FP and SR4 are always saying "it's not like you can't keep playing SR3".

Well your right, I can keep playing SR3, and I probably will. But Fanpro is never going to get another dime of my money. Ever.

I should have known this would happen when the surge thread said SR was being marketed to 12 year olds, I was only thinking of appropriate content at that time but now I realise that the average 12 year old would not be able to learn the SR3 system, a significant dumping down would be necessary if that is the target audience.

Edward

D20 modern (From the SRD anyway, though I assume that the rules are the same in the Core rule book:

Yeah, but IIRC D20 Modern assigns 2d8 damage to .45 ACP, which is enough to inspire rage as you think about the implications of firearms and hitpoints.

D20 automatic fire is even slower than SR automatic fire.

D20 is weird because apparently they have standardized damage for 8mm Nambu, that shitty cartridge that no one, not even in the Japanese Imperial Army, liked, and which you hardly ever see anymore in the world ever.

Yeah, D20 is totally strange and pointless. I don't understand why people don't just play GURPS instead. GURPS is better and more realistic than d20 in every concievable way, if you want to go the route of generic role playing systems.


EDIT:

From now on, whenever anyone suggests to me a game of D20, I will retort, "8mm Nambu! LOL!"

How did you all get the idea that SR4 uses D&D-style HP instead of the old two-bar system?

er, I don't think we did - we were comparing deadliness of sr3 to D20.

FYI, there's also the True 20 system, used by Green Ronin's Blue Rose and (IIRC) Mutants & Masterminds.

If you hit someone, you don't roll for damage. Instead each weapon/attack has a damage value, which can be modified by attributes (i.e. Strength for melee weapons) or abilities (i.e. feats).

IIRC, the defender makes a Toughness check (Toughness bonus + d20) against a target number (DC - Difficulty Challenge) of 15 plus the above damage modifier.

If you succeed, nothing happens. If you fail, you get a damage level that based on how badlyyou missed the roll. A 1-5 miss might mean you get "hurt" (adding a penalty for future Toughness rolls). A huge miss might kill you in one single strike.

I haven't played Blue Rose yet, as the setting doesn't seem like my cup of tea (that might change once I get to read it in detail). On the other hand, its rules system is excellent. They are, IMHO, the best d20 rules I've seen--good enough I want to run a campaign with them.

Oh yeah, the True 20 system only uses the d20 die. No d4, d6, d8, d10 or d12. Blue Rose's magic ("Arcana") is also quite different--this is no Forgotten Realms.

Well, I lost a character to a punker who was defaulting with a rocket launcher. Does that count?

And wow the spiral of topic crawl begins.

grabs topic, pitches D20 conversation, looks at the previous material and then continues...

Okay, I have to admit I *really* want to meet MFB in August if he (she?) does make it to Gencon in Indy. I want to sooooOOOOOoooo badly shake the hand of the person who is, to my knowledge, the first playtester since SR2/3 to openly/publicly decry a game under development. If nothing else, I want to meet the guy/gal who spoke up within the PTer ranks and said "this isn't going to be good overall" (my summary of post(s) made).

As for those people who are saying that the dice mechanics don't really matter, I have a question for all of you. Serious question, nothing flackish here.

If the dice mechanics do not matter, then I wonder how many of you have ever heard while playing your own game of <insert game system here> ... "well if you're doing that, why don't you play that game"? I've heard it in the past for AD&D (first/second ed), Marvel Superheroes, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, DC Heroes, Babylon-5, Star Trek (two editions that I can recall) and all the others? If dice mechanics are not a part of the feel of a game, then why do each game system have different mechanics developed for them?

Until the advent of the D20 system/structure, each game system came about with it's own die mechanics. Sure, we all used to say or have said "I can play this using any system" but the truth is we really couldn't. We played the die mechanic that worked best overall. We tweaked it to where we needed things to work and went on about what we as a game group would call "our game" and/or "our entertainment".

I have for the most part backed into the "opinion camp" of "wait until it comes out", but I really have to admit to also saying "the system as a whole was never that broken save in one/two critical areas. Nothing was perfect, but it's dice and paper and imagination and no matter what we try that will never be the same as Real Life".

What I have seen that I admit I am very intrigued by:

Splitting of Sorcery and Conjuring (and I'm presuming Enchanting, which really always has been split) into subskills. For the most part, this intrigues me and I do want to see this.

Merging of "Simsense Technologies" on some level. An ever more pervasive "Matrix" as it were. I have always enjoyed Riggers and Deckers and have personally always found a way to integrate those character types into game(s). Simply because we've always understood that no character, no matter who it is playing it or what kind of character, can be involved in everything. Note that involved is not the same thing as capable.

What I am not at all intrigued by:

The redoing of the Attributes. Flat out, it's ultimately coming down to the movement of previous game mechanics into new areas of definition. Nothing more and Nothing less.

The loss/restructuring of Dice Pools. I have never had a problem with Tactical Pool and in fact have allowed for the expanded development of the "Tactical Pool" to include all things involved in a "run" within obvious reason. Hell in our games even Matrix Tactics, Vehicle Tactics and Astral Tactics have been hammered out and the reasons for them and how they might work are even performable. The "Combat Pool" I know I"m going to miss. I remember when the switch from second to third editions occurred which changed the frequency by which pools refreshed. Three of our group played a game with our most experienced characters in a retrieval situation from a hot combat zone. We would survived well enough before only sweating and incidental wounds. The new refresh rate nearly ended with us slaughtering ourselves. Lethality had been reborn. What I see/read that is occurring only continues to make me believe that luck is being ultimately removed from the games flexibility.

The restructing of Karma. I'm not entirely sure I grasp what is going on in the suggestions from the FAQs on the SRRPG website, but from what I have read I'm extremely annoyed. It has moved the whole concept of "Karma" into an attributive matter. Something that insofar as I can tell is immediately measurable and far more consistent than the concept of "Karma" should ever be. Karma is a flexible force that is as much a measure of reputation as it is a measure of experience and relaxation. As an attribute, unless this is really something staggeringly amazing, it is becomes a consistent thing. As a "pool" it becomes a reserve of energy upon which the individual draws upon in moments of desperation, need or desire.

I will probably still buy the first/main book. But if the changes in it reflect what I ultimately feel is going to be, then I doubt I'll be buying more. Same will probably reflect/trickle down from me to the entire game group here. I know that may not seem like a lot, but it can add up over time.

I'm like everyone else, my "gamer prayers" have not been answered by anything but "have faith". And to be blunt, this is not a time of sincere faith in development.

It really breaks the "magic is rare(er than being mundane)" concept of Shadowrun, if being Awakened is so cheap as to make it ubiquitous. Anyone who didn't plan on cybering their character within an inch of their soul would be wise to pick up magical ability, if not actual talent and skill, just to have another trick up their sleeve and another area to occasionally advance in.

For the record, D20 modern cyber rules (haven't picked up the cyber sourcebook) suck worse than the worst portions of SR cyber, any edition.

BTW, I love d20 modern, for what it is, a versatile game system. Con is probably the single most important stat int he game, as with an average Con (9 to 11) you can be killed with just about every weapon in the game. Punker uses an action point, adds extra damage, + max damage (luck here) and not even with a critical hit can whack your lvl 20 if you fail the save (it can happen). That said, I don't want my SR to become D20 modern/future. that's what SR is for me and fills that niche, I save D20 rules for everything outside of cyberpunk (as my group basically only knows the D20 rules and a few portions of SR)

okay. a couple things i posted seem to have been unclear.

SR4 is still a lethal game. lethality was merely an example i was using to illustrate the point that mechanics impact the feel of a setting.

i compared SR4 to d20 rather than WoD because, as in d20, i feel restricted by the die rolls. in WoD, you can split your pools to accomplish things, or dump all your pool on a single important action--similar in philosophy (if not execution) to SR3's pool system. in SR4, i feel that control has been lost. like i said, if all you're looking at is the fact that you roll handsfull of dice and count successes? yeah, it's SR; yeah, WoD might be a more apt comparison. i'm looking at the overall direction of the game, though, and that overall direction feels like what-you-see-is-what-you-roll, in regards to your charsheet.

does that mean you might as well just play d20 Future? tempting as it is to take the easy dig and say "yes", i'm going to refrain. SR4 offers a deeper game than d20. it offers a touch more realism, and it's certainly less hack-and-slash--d20 doesn't offer much in the way of realism, when it comes to disparity between character levels; a level 15 character is going to kill a level 1 character every time. one problem i see with SR4, honestly, is that it tries too hard to keep the playing field level, giving characters very little room for growth. so, no, SR4 != d20 Future with elves. but it's certainly a step in that direction--several steps, all told.

oh, also. not going to GC this year. low funds and the loss of a big reason for going. maybe next year.