well, we know that the LE's were sold out basically within the hour of them hitting the floor every day at gencon....

No not really at all.

There was never anything stopping rigging, magic, decking, and combat from all using the same mechanic. For whatever reason they just never did it. I used a short hand version of rigging and decking that was essentially the same system.

An SR3R would have been far better than SR4. I am sure there will be huge initial sales. It's new, theres lots of marketing, there at a con that gets like 100k people in the doors. If its good the sales will stay strong as it workd of mouth spreads. If its bad we will know within a year or so.

The sad part is that it will probably be in between. Just with a new audience. More D20'ers who think it needs work but who still play it as opposed to the SR3'ers playing it and saying it needs work.

To be honest, my biggest complaint about SR4 is the fact it's more invariable than Call of Cthulhu is when it comes to campaign styles. And CoC itself has, at most, 10 campaign styles it can support, as opposed to the 121 million of GURPS or the 200 of SR3. The rest of the complaints are all merely what adds up to the biggest one.

Due to dice mechanics, SR4 cannot support the type of ultra-corp, we-are-hired-by-governments campaign style, or even anything even close to it. It is a street style game, and the entirety of the mechanics are geared towards that. That is why it has easily-reached limits and why the entire dice system starts to fall apart when you start getting into anything above a 6 in anything. That's also why the advancement system is the way it is. Using that for a group of UCAS marines really doesn't support the "we're badass and you know it" style associated with that type of campaign. And, when you get cases where the PCs are running a corporation and dealing with other corporations (say, my campaign or a similar style The Grat Krass is involved in), then pretty much the entire system falls apart or actually actively discourages it.

It's much like how much you have to tweak DnD to create a low-powered campaign without heavy magic involvement.

In the end, it would take me two weeks just to create enough houserules to make SR4 compatible with anything above street and manage to have actual game balance. Unlike SR3, SR4 simply doesn't scale.

I have read the book (legally, so shaddap).

I have participated in IRC run-throughs of the game system.

I have come to the conclusion that it just isn't as good as SR3, nor as playable. It's not streamlined, it's obfuscated for obfuscation's sake. It has glaring logical errors throughout that personally annoy and anger me, and there are definite examples of bad taste within the BBB (references to pedophilia and bunraku parlors--mind you, I do believe that should exist, but whoever put it into the BBB that is likely to be the main source for parents who want to decide whether their children can play SR4 is moronic at best. Oh, and the cursing annoys me, too.).

They changed "Frag" to "Fuck". Although there is a new curse word "Glitch". Lots of non-cursing Or'zet has made it into the SR4 vernacular apparently, as well.

How is 'glitch' used? It almost sounds like something that would replace 'slot'.

Fifteen years of "frag" and now we have "fuck."

Let's all pause and raise a glass to the folks who were at least somewhat restrained for a while. Yeah, we all curse like sailors--but we aren't writing books that potential pissants might read.

"SHADOWRUN SAYS FUCK! IT'S LIKE GTA! NO MORE OF IT FOR YOU!"

Yeah...I exaggerate. But it's just bad taste, IMO.

Actually, I don't think you are exaggerating. I think people will actually say that.

Meh. As long as it's not that "Devil Worshipping DnD game", parents won't give it a second thought. Heck, they'd probably even tolerate that "weirdo goth Vampire game", too.

Well, the horned skull is gone, so that's one less Satanic-reference to be leveled at SR by the parents of Little Timmy the Noob.

Mind you, I liked the skull...

I saw a thread where 77 % said they would use 4th....and only a small% would kling to 3rd. Why would that be? Have they all been brainwashed?

Really, if you prefer 3rd, that;s fine. But don't think everyone else is a raving lunatic because they feel different. It is clear there are very different opinions of shadowrun 4th. That's fine. But now go and do something usefull with all that energy you put trying to put down 4th edition. Go write a great campaign for 3rd, wich uses all the different rules wich our group was too dumb to comprehend

Just talking about streamlining:

Combat is about the same (as far as dice rolled, damage taken, boxes filled), although it is much easier to count hits against a fixed TN than a floating TN that you have to calculate every single action (SR3 feels just like Battletech at times... when we play Battletech, my group looks to me for TNs because I have all of the charts and such memorized). The Matrix rules, though, are much much simpler. Simple things like shutting down cameras and retrieving paydata that used to take 4 or so odd rolls per task under the old VR 2.0 rules now only take 1 roll, 2 at the most. Even Cybercombat is better. It's much easier to add the "tech" into a typical Shadowrun without doing a separate 2nd run for the decker.

Not that I can't understand some of your arguments, but ...

Although from a pure marketing perspective in the U.S., it's possibly not the smartest move--or it may be an advantage. These things can be hard to judge. It's not the safest thing to do from a purely marketing perspective.

Ellery, if they wanted a safe investment they wouldn't be making PnP RPGs at all.

^


Indeed.

Eidolon, your post reminds me of the buzzsaw room in the final level of Shinobi 1 for Game Gear.

~J

Damn! Mfb rolled 30 6's for his Use Clue Bat skill. And that's before the rerolls and against a TN of 2.

Edit: Grinder, if the shoe fits...

Edit2: If it doesn't fit, then consider it to be a side effect of annoyance. Mfb only said what a lot of us were thinking.

We have a saying in german: "gleich und gleich gesellt sich gern".

Maybe i have to convert to the SR4 haters army.

Can you translate for those of us who can't be bothered to learn German or look it up in a translater? Otherwise, your next sentence could refer to a lot of things.

Oh, sorry. Roughly translated it's "people with equal attitude like to hang out together".
(it was referred to the "idiot")
Very roughly. Hope it does make sense somehow.

To keep from being associated with Marc, the idiot who is basically going around and trying to stir up shit? Yeah, you would have to convert to the haters side.

Exactly.

If you look closely, you'll notice that the tension goes both ways--there are plenty of attacks by people who like SR4 on those who don't as well. It's a natural reaction to a divisive product. Large changes are almost always divisive unless the resulting product is clearly better than the original in all ways that are different.

It just goes with the territory. In six months it'll be more in line with other fora, I expect.