Yes I would say there are similarities. But Shadowrun came out first, so I believe it would be a case of V:tm borrowing form SR, not the other way around.

I think a lot of the ire is that SR has always been a wholly original game. It sticks in a few peoples gullet to have it suddenly become very similar to an existing game.

Wow. When posts reach the level of pointless name calling where even *I* just skim them and wait for something worthwhile to be typed, you know things are gettin' low.

nothing's too low for you, stupid-brain.

I'm not all caught up in the semantics of the word 'streamlining'. In my opinion, Shadowrun does need streamlining, in that it needs to have one core mechanic. SR4 is doing this.

My problem is the core mechanic they have chosen. A system with a fixed TN with no (or little) exploding dice is not attractive to me. The lack of Tactical Pools is also a negative in my opinion. I actually cringe at the thought of what the new Drain mechanics are (if my suspicions are correct).

I was attracted to Shadowrun right from the start, mostly for the setting and magic system, but the core mechanics were alright. Over the course of the subsequent editions the game got better ... for the most part. There were problems, but on the whole it worked pretty well. I would have liked to see SR4 with a core mechanic based on one of the SR3 systems, like Magic or Combat. It would streamline the system, while maintaining the familiarity and feel of Shadowrun.

Wow. And here I figured my one or two playing sessions of V:TM would limit my knowledge of it. I honestly expected to be 100% wrong. Turns out that's not the case. Cool.

Seriously though, what I like about SR is its really simple to teach (at least, so far as I've seen. Chargen bites, of course, but other then that...) - Just roll d6 x whatever you're asked to roll. Body 4 and you get shot? Roll 4 dice. Yeah, the variable target number thing is annoying sometimes (and oftentimes feels as if it was written for a computer game, what with the up and downstaging required.) but I like that sort of thing. It adds realism to the notion that doing something easy is almost guarenteed (AKA fixing a paper jam), while doing something nigh-impossible (sniping a target at 800 yards in a hurricane) is something you need a lot...LOT of luck to pull off.

I like the fact that your skill is what determines how likely you are to succeed at whatever it is you try and is lorded over by your attributes, AKA physical/mental capacity to handle that particular task. If I try to hit a target at 10 yards with a heavy pistol and my pistol skill is 3, I'm pretty likely to hit. (One shot with a take-aim action puts the TN at 3. I have 3 4/6 chances to hit (1 and 2 are misses.) if my abyssmal spelling and math grades work together)

Now, fast-forward to SR4. if my skill is average and my quickness is average, I have 6 dice to try to hit a TN 5 and I might need X amount of "hits"? Hits apparently negated (I could be wrong. I still haven't seen a solid Mechanic, or maybe I'm just dumb and missed it) by 1's?

I think earlier in this thread some random rolls were presented as probability indicators. Fact is, with 1's being failures that negate (drawing from SR4's daddy-without-DNA-test V:TM, so I could be wrong. I pray I am.) rather than generic misses unless all 1's are rolled, and with a 1/3 chance per die to score a hit no matter if the task is kicking the ball dead in front of me, I effectively have half the chance to -negate- a hit (1/6) as I have of hitting (2/6.) The rest are just failures. With six dice going straight-flush style, I hit twice and one of them is cancelled. Or I "glitch," whatever that means.

Now, with a threshold for hits, 2 hits might be enough but with a glitch involved it might be a light wound rather than a medium, or it might just tear armor, or whatever else these newfangled computer-terms do. If a glitch negates hits, it'll leave me with a miss vs threshold 2.

Probably-wrong math by yours truly aside, the core (core, sort of like an apple core.) mechanic of Att + Skill is EXACTLY the same as WW, (Apparently, since its verified by others on the board unless I'm insane at this point. Possible, I concede.) The core method for deciding hits, and I -could- be wrong because I am limited in my WoD knowledge, is also the same (Fixed TN, no exploding dice except rare circumstances...) With this in mind, sadly, I have to conclude that SR 4 is indeed Shadowrun: 2070 mercs. Or whatever "Shadowrun: The Some-act-that-sounds-cool" would be best suited. (Ascention, Masquerade, Requium, Wandering, and other cool things already are taken. Sorry)

Which really makes it Shadowrun 2.0, not Shadowrun 1.3 (At least, that's how I'd see things, especially considering Fanpro's wise recognition of "legacy systems.") Its a sequel, not the same thing with a patch applied. It could be great, it looks...Dark...(Pun...Intended....)

Now, sleep claimeths. I hope. [edit] P.S. thanks to those who spoke up to defend me - No, to defend what they feel is right.

It doesn't make sense to have 1's canceling out successes with a TN of 5, since you'd have to roll a huge fistfull of dice to have any hope of reliably generating a success. While I sincerely doubt they've put in enough thought to the statistics of their dice system to avoid all kinds of problems, I trust that they can at least avoid this pitfall.

It's less obvious to me what the possible set of glitch mechanics are, and which pitfalls they'd avoid. For example, if you glitch any time you roll at least one 1, you'd glitch almost every time if you had high attributes and good skills. I think this is something to avoid--but there's a huge diversity of possible glitch mechanics (glitch if you roll 1/3 ones, or 1/2 ones, or all ones, or more ones than successes, or half of the non-successes are ones, or . . .).

But this does sound rather like Shadow: the Running to me, in terms of mechanics.

.... or maybe 6's negate 1's, which is why they're better htits than fives? However, again, this would turn even an expert sniper (6 ATT + 6 SKILL) into clumsy smurf with a sniper rifle, as he'd glitch about one out of five times.

I dunno, but expanding the rule of one is something I more and more dislike. So far, for me, SR4 is a so-so affair - there are things I dislike, things I like, and things that needed no change but I can live with. However, if glitching means failing/reduced success, and happens by any mechanic discussed here ... then the success determination system is really flawed and really feels wrong even for someone who doesn't give too much about rules.

Damn, this teaser page is very disheartening. Even with everything that had been said before I was still heartily looking forward to SR4, but now there are things that seem to completely go against the feel of the game here.

1) No Rule of Six. There was something about the way that gave even someone less skilled a chance, or someone with a high skill the ability to fight against seemingly insurrmountable modifiers. I was hoping this would still be the case. Unfortunately this gives me the impression it will be 'don't bother rolling you're not skilled enough to do this'.

2) Extended tests? So simplifying my making lots of rolls to achieve what SR did in one? Useful so you know how long something takes to do. And there's me thinking SR already handle that by the base time divided by successes. A very neat mechanic which I actually ended up converting to _other_ systems to get rid of extended tests.

Ahh well. I will still keep a 'wait and see' attitude but my excitement has now been dampened to 'ehhhh, I'll take a look'.

I can see it being used by techies and whatnot when they're trying to open a maglock or something, too.

Hmmm.... maybe to deal with the increase in stats, I'll houserule SR4 down to a three-stat system, taking the average of the appropriate input stats, to create derived stats:

* Physical: Anything Physical
* Mental: Anything required mental activity
* Shadowrun: For any test dealing with a "Shadowrun" concept (I suppose this could be called Edge, since everyone is so hot and bothered about Edge), like "hacking," magic use, matrix use, cyberarm control, collecting great dragon toenail clippings, talking smack to an IE, or determining how filling your flesh is to a ghoul.

Now that's what I call streamlining.

... or you could go without any rules, attributes, and determine results by flipping a coin. Doesn't get any simpler (low attribute number) than zero, after all.

I would go against the coin flipping because a fixed TN of heads is too hard to hit on a d2.

If I wanted a simple game I'd play Candyland (I have it and I'm not afraid to use it).

If I want to flip through 3-6 books for one skill (assuming I am using the expanded rules available) then I'll play SR3 (and I probably still will).

I'm still going to purchase SR4 and figure out if it is a game mechanic I want to play with. The arguments flinging around here don't hold a lot of water because noone can seem to allign their vocabulary (i.e. streamlined versus simple).

As far as I am concerned, the majority of the people who are fighting over this are just locked into their own definitions.

So if I say apple, do you all hear granny smith, washington, or iPod?

Bullshido.net has taught me that it's important to fling around insults and put people down when having discussions. It keeps everyone honest.

I think the price being referred to is in stuff that will be gotten rid of/dropped in the name of streamlining (pools, for example), not in cash.

Or was there a lot of that stuff that I've forgotten in 2e->3e?

~J

Oh. But, yes, actually there was a lot of things that changed between SR2 and SR3. The two big ones that still keep getting moaned about to this day are the changes to initiative (which, for the most part, makes all those big initiative boosts not as powerful as they used to be, even though the price remained the same -- and based upon one of Crimsondude's rants earlier, that change should have killed every existing character he had as the outcome of practically every fight they were in would have been drastically altered by that devestating change to the rules) and the removal of things like grounding.

Then there was the removal of the Skill Web and skill Concentrations, the rate at which dice pools refreshed (every Turn instead of every action), and so on and so forth. And keep in mind that SR2 to SR3 was more of a revision of the rules, not a truly new edition.

Yeah, that's what I said (although book prices HAVE gone up since 7 years ago). But even losing grounding and 2nd edition initiative is NOTHING compared to losing variable TNs and combat pool.

I don't know. I still get the impression that we do have "tactical" control in the game, it's just all been delegated to the Edge attribute. It apparently lets you perform actions with the equivalence of the old Rule of Six, lets you get out of a bad situation, and doubtlessly several other things. The only real difference is that we basically will only have one "tactical pool" for all of our actions rather than tons of little ones that are all derived from various other things, and actions will rely more strongly on your actual skill and related attributes as opposed to now where it's all about your skill, while your attributes influence some of your pools.

[qutoe]Yeah, except that I never said anything about Initiative in the SR4 forum.[/quote]
I never said you said that. I was implying that it was the same kind of argument, and 1) how asinine it was and 2) how many agree that gameplay improved despite the naysayers who were whining about the change in the beginning.

1)So there has been talk about this edge attribute.... it states for non cyber non magical charecters.... does this mean the corporate secratary now has a chance of kicking the crap out of mr razor guy cause she has an edge... and gets to reroll her 6's while razor guy does not since he is cybered?

2)You can purchase Magic.. does this nulify the edge atrribute you had been previously purchasing... (no bother going into cyber mages not enough to even talk about it)?

3)Are ther going to be certain skills that edge rules over i.e.(Edge+skill) Is it trully an attribute like stated then, or a modifier (Att.+skill+edge)? If its meant to be a balancer that is an attribute like they stated this just seems to be a mechanic alone that would take up at least 1 chapter to explain (and not a short one)!

You can find a lot of examples of the anti-SR4 crowd being insulting, but I wouldn't call that (edit: the post you linked to, or anything currently on that thread) one.

~J

Never claimed otherwise. Though I noticed you just piped up, too. Imagine that.

Yeah. Funny, how I might toss two cents into a conversation where you quote me directly. How weird of me.

Just pointing out the irony of a hypocrite calling someone else one is all. And by your logic, I had every right to post as well considering Eldritch was chastising the "yay SR4 crowd" for being rude (which, while certainly true for some and myself included, I never denied either).

But you and some of your friends seem to have trouble with people throwing your own logic back in your face, so that's no surprise.

Pro- side, anti- side, it's all partisan, unfortunately. And partisans are just a pain in the ass to deal with. The people I enjoy dealing with the most are the ones who aren't saying much, but when they say something, make a point I haven't heard before.

I wouldn't call myself partisan. I've formed opinions based upon educated observations and reasonable conclusions drawn from them. The only people I find it to be a real pain to deal with are the people who formed opinions without basing them on the aformentioned gathering and reasonable interpretation of information, since they can't really defend their arguments with actual solid data, and as such tend to waste a lot more time arguing semantics and otherwise avoiding the addressing of well-crafted counter-arguments and detractions.

The problem is that neither side, in general, is really willing to respect the conclusions of the other side.

For example, the removal of Combat Pool has many people saying that there will be no dynamic allocateable resource in SR4. Another conclusion is that there is, its just working in some new way. But people don't seem to want to consider that, they just say that the removal of Combat Pool will ruin Shadowrun no matter what.

I'm curious, where was my insult in the Vampire thread?