Well at least there is a very good chance there won't be any new magical skills. The base 6 are intended to be used for all meta magics. No new Skill for each meta magic.

Here's one vote for "death to Small Unit Tactics!"

Sure, bring back some variant of its rules if you like... making checks to grant Init bonuses to your team is all good in my book... but the Leadership skill damn well ought to do something, which it never has in any edition of SR I can recall. Considering it has Tactics as a specialty, it's pretty clear that Leadership is the true home for any such rules.

Even now we have details on how Leadership should be resisted(!) but no guidelines on what sort of benefits it might bring!

Hmm. I for one would prefer for such predictable additional skills to be listed in the Core Book, but essentially left as "Rules to follow in a future supplement; in the meantime, may be used at GM's discretion."

A skill list in the Core Book ought to be as comprehensive as humanly possible, even if applications of those skills need to be left for future elaboration.

Too late now, I suppose.

Unfortunately (or fortunately IMO), they set themselves up to re-introduce three magic skills - the Enchanting skill group.

I agree with the majority (for once) though, death to Small Unit Tactics!

You mean like Leadership?

But flippancy aside, there's only so much space and as is a lot more was crammed into the BBB than in previous editions. Few people would be satisfied with placeholder entries.

One thing Rob did announce was that he wanted to keep rules in the rules books. That should help minimize the problems of keeping track of them. Furthermore with a development policy which favors "plug ins" rather than patches and alternate subsets rules bloat should be minimized and streamlined.

I'm seeing a lot of people assuming that were Small Unit Tactics to be revisited it would function in a similar way to SR3. This might not be the case.

With Arsenal, Leadership could become useful... just let it replace the old skill of Small Unit Tactics concerning combat boosts.

Well, the favored function as a new Skill would be: not at all.

Doesn't have to be. You could use Ritual Spellcasting and/or Binding along with Assensing for refining materials. Alchemy as a new aura type for specialization in Assensing, and Talismongering as new specialization for the other.

But a whole group you think? Why would you need a whole group?

Hah. I trump your flippancy with deadly seriousness!

Yeah, I do mean like Leadership. It's never been made very crunchy. I would love it to be. But as you said, a book has finite space. I don't insist on all skills having crunch in the core, but I would much prefer for core skills to be crunchified in supplements than for whole new skills to be introduced.

I think it's reasonable for a core book to at least describe the existence of a domain of competency, even if its capabilities are not fleshed out. This allows players who want to use the rules that are coming out in future to peg a few points in there at character generation. Who knows, a GM might even homebrew some placeholder mechanics to go with the placeholder skill.

Players shouldn't open a book to find a new skill, that they have to buy from *zero*, that has never even been mentioned before.

You mentioned a "plug-in" design philosophy. This is a Good Thing. It would be even better if long-foreseen plug-ins already had a metaphorical "expansion slot" prepared for them in the core book. A very good job of this has been done by the new systems for tradition creation, spirit summoning, Initiation and Submersion in the core book. But dropping new skills (other than highly specialized Exotic-type skills) on PCs when they are established characters verges on rude.

To paraphrase the general philosophy of d20 skill mechanics: Don't make new skills. Make new *applications* for existing skills.

Consider: the vehicle mechanic skills are in the book. They have almost no mechanics (EDIT: rules, not greasy-handed technicians) associated with them. We don't need a vehicle-modding ruleset in the core book.

Enchanting/Talismongering-type skills' relationship to the mage is *exactly* analogous to Mechanic's relationship to the rigger. We don't need focus/fetish creation rules in a core book. The skills just need to *be there*.

Anyways, this is once again an entirely moot point of game design philosophy. <shrug> Better luck next time?

If by core you mean Talismongering was in a core supplement, Magic In The Shadows then yes.

I don't recall Enchanting being in the Core Rules (BBB) for SR1 or SR2.

Huh? When were the Enchanting rules in any of the base books (SR1 thru 3)? When did enchanting become core? Get off the soapbox and get your facts straight: SR1 introduced it in the Grimoire, SR2 updated it with Grimoire 2 and SR3 introduced it yet again in MitS.

One thing the SR4 base book does is cram more stuff into it than the SR3 BBB ever did but there's only so much space available.

Rules creep and bloat are only problems if new rules are not streamlined and previously planned to be seemlessly integrated, compatible, intuitive and follow the same core mechanic. This was never the case with SR3.

If as announced SR4 condenses the rules SR3 divided amongst 8 books in 5 AND manages to add new stuff while keeping everything consistent and integrated (and playing off the same core ruleset), I fail to see how you would consider that anything but streamlining.

 
You do realize the same thing was said (and holds true) of the SR3 base book. You didn't need anything else, unless you wanted "to enhance your play". FanPro came right out and announced there would be more core rulebooks long before SR4 was released - and also said these would be integrated.

What are you on about? On the same week SR4 was announced FanPro posted a link to their Winter 2005/06 catalogue which included Street Magic. The names for other core rulebooks have been known for months now. A (limited) number of core rule books was outlined at all the events and seminars FanPro held this year.

What did you think would be in a book called Street Magic that would be the SR4 replacement for Magic in the Shadows if not rules? Some Metamagic techniques were crammed into the BBB but what about the updates to the rest of the MitS rules, the Metamagics in MitS and the SOTAs and the adept powers?

It can make the "bloat" more managable. I think "bloat" is getting the catchall treatment here of any added material that isn't fluff, anything that has hard numbers and is expressed in terms of the rules/dice mechanic.

Under that "bloat" can be a good thing in that it allows you to flesh out the world. But it only tends to be a good thing if presented in a way that allows you to use the new stuff with less pain than the extra is worth.

When i think of "bloat" i typically think of things that do NOT mesh with the existing, or replace the existing rules in places with something different. In that sense "steamlining" with an eye towards expandability can indeed help a LOT in the prevention.

UmmPCs that you let advance to god-like levels are going to be like gods. That's what the SR4 hard cap, and agressive soft cap on SR3 was all about. Trying to keep PCs from godhood so soon.

The basic mechanic of SR4 still [mostly] works there (the Spirit stat blocks are wacked though). If you mean the Threshholds you use for beginning 'runners don't challenge the advanced 'runner, well duh. If you want to challenge the advanced runner you'll have to come up with things that are actually tougher to do...and that difficulty is represented by the Threshhold that gets set.

Fortunately anywhere there is an Opposed roll this happens mostly automatically as you select an appropriately powered opponent, with environmental modifiers and such still playing somewhat of a roll. At least the modifiers are always knocking off the same amount from the average # of hits, even if they don't affect the Hit distribution curve exactly the same.

There's already a mechanic in the core book that is similar to Small Unit Tactics. It's an optional rule when utilized with tactical information feeds overlayed to your AR-linked teammates, and it's described in the opening story, Buzzkill.

It's in the black box on page 208 titled, "AR Modifiers". It suggests that dice pool or Initiative bonuses might be available, but at GM fiat (god forbid they add some goddamn rules in the rule book). That's... well, identical to the SUT bonus without even needing to roll dice (how... simplified).

Okay, let's consider a realistic problem. If I don't give them enough karma, I'm being a bad GM. If I kill a character simply because of how powerful they got, I'm a bad GM. If I have Mr. 24s guarding the Stuffer Shack that holds the phone the players plan on using as a distraction instead of normal security guards, then I'm a bad GM. I have a whole list of these, all of which present problems to balancing out the characters. And, yes, it comes from watching this site. Thus, my problem comes across as to how to balance it out without resulting to tactics that are bad GMing. And, unfortunately, I see that as becomming an increasing problem as the players gain karma.

You mean, like shooting a moving target in pitch blackness using burst fire? Wait, a smart player can do that at chargen... Oooh! I know! They must do such things as turn water into wine without magic and squeeze blood from rocks!

Seriously, the problem I see is that what you advise either requires a rewrite of the modifiers or to simply ignore them. Either way, they are mostly not that useful.

Once again, being forced to use supermen in situations where it is not realistic to face them. Without using them, most of the run becomes a cakewalk.

True... but that is somewhat automated, without, well, any actual descisions made by someone.

Yeah, it's been around for 3 'generations' of the rules. It's an intricate part of the setting - not fluff powers and spells. It should have been in the MRB, listed with the other skills. In fact, any skill you planned on adding later should have been in the MRB. Sorry if you didn't have the room - but there it is.

Cutting down 8 books int 5 is not that impressive, sorry. Keeping it Streamlined and consistant - that will be impressive.

See above - can they keep it integrated?
Sorry, but the Line 'Everyhting you need to play' just gets me for some reason - as a RP'er for a very long time I know it's just a line. A majority of the players will by the additional source books. If you try to be a GM with just the core book, no one will want to play. And if you try and play off just the core book you'll rapidly get overwlemed with the 'Enhanced' stuff everyone else is playing with. Game companies Count on it. Bank on it. It's a part if the entire industry. That line, while technically true, should be stricken.

Physical adepts and meta magic were all part of the supp. rules as well, and slowly added the the MRB. Why would enchanting be left out?

What am I on about? Well, you asked;

The death of my favorite game. Done. Gone. Buried. And somehting else standing there in it's place with the same name. The entire setting, the flavor of the game has been changed. Everything that has been done to the game has killed it for me.

I was eagerly anticipatating the new novels. Now, I'm not even really interested.

What did I think?
Well when the announcement was made, I was hoping for similar rules. Not an entire rewrite.
Then I thought, "Well thats that. But at least the setting is good. The novels and some of the event books should be good."
But no, thats changed as well.

It would have been nice if fanpro would have taken advantage of 15 years of playtesting and built on that. Now they are back at square one. See ya in a couple years for SR4.5 the "Er, we left this out, or didn't think of this' edition.

Well let me weigh in on your opinion there.

What has happened to your favorite game.

The entire setting has changed? I don't see where it has really. Instead of everything being wired, its wireless for the most part. A few of the concepts have been tweaked slightly and a few of the lines blurred between them, but nothing gone.

Actualy to me SR3 killed alot of what I felt shadowrun was from SR2. SR3 felt to me to be more of Fantasy with a little bit of a cyberpunk backdrop. Whereas to me SR2 felt like cyberpunk with a little bit of fantasy thrown in. But maybe thats because I never had the chance to grab the magic book for second ed. But even the adventures, which thanks to a good friend I've lost contact with I have a good bit of, in second eddition focused more on cyberpunk. SR3 was high magic. Everywhere you looked something magical was going on. Oh look the commet, SURGE, ect ect ect. The list goes on.

Then you come to SR4. And right from the word go it FEELS like cyberpunk. The setting, the stories, all oooze cyberpunk and grit to me. The descriptions of the standard archetypes, and what shadowrunners are, oozes grit.

So to me, SR4 is a godsend if just for the emphasis change that I've percieved so far. So I'm wondering why you think the flavor has been changed.

As for the new novels? Meh. I'll write my own, and come up with my own plots.

As for the rules changes. I'm glad they did it. In my opinion SR3 was abomidable. They needed a entire re-write and badly.

[sarcasm]Yes because they didn't learn a thing from those 15 years of playtesting. They ignored every suggestion ever made. Ignored every mistake and what they learned from those mistakes. They threw out all the collective knowledge of shadowrun out of the door and decided to start blank as if they had never looked at a shadowrun book in their lives[/sarcasm]

Do you realize how rediculouse that sounds? They have attmepted, and what I can see have very much succeeded in my opinion, to make the rules easier to understand, and all virtualy work similarly. I don't have to learn a completely new rule set to play a mage. I don't have to learn a completely new rule set to play a hacker or rigger. Everything runs off esentialy the same engine. There are a few things that change between the archetypes, but I don't have to figure out what all the system ratings are, what they mean, which ar e for which tests, what my programs actualy do, ect ect ect.

And if you look at the BBB you can see they have attempted at the very least to include all the skills they want to. theres the pilot arthroform skill, but no arthroform drones in the BBB, which would suggest there will be some later. Theres not nephritic screen right now, but its mentioned in the BBB as providing a bonus somewhere. I think they've made a very good effort to do what they said they would. Condense and streamline.

I don't think Shadowrun is dead, I think its been saved from SR3.

*Ahem* Harlequin's Back?

I'm not feeling the grit, either.

~J

It would seem they did, only an answer you didn't like came back and it was "REBOOT! Then rebuild it based upon the knowledge gained and the form of the SR world." There are actually a LOT of style, flavour, and form similarities.

Yup one of my favorite runs out of any of SR2. But yes it did have a very magical bent to it.

But as I said to me it felt more Cyberpunk than SR3 ever did to me.

So let me ask you since you don't feel the grit. Why not? What makes SR4 seem so squeeky clean story/fluff/rules wise?

Just because it's been in three iterations of the rules doesn't make it essential. If it were that essential it would have been in SR3's BBB. It wasn't. Given space allowances and the fact that supplemental rulebooks were announced FanPro left the non-essentials for later books. As always you're entitled to your opinion, but as this thread has shown on that very subject opinions vary.

Now if FanPro had announced that the BBB was all that you would ever need to play with I'd be right by your side. FanPro didn't.

Including Initiation (and Submersion) in the core rules this time round was at least partially a move to cater to the demands of SR old timers (newbs to the system wouldn't even know the options were there until Street Magic came out). FanPro included them because they were a reasonable demand and those rules opened the way for future development. Given space constraints certain other material was considered non-essential in the pages allocated for each section.

Well, opinions will vary. Compressing most of the no-fiction, strictly rules information that filled FASA's 6 books + FanPro's two SOTAs into 5 books seems impressive to me.

For what its worth what I've seen of development of Street Magic it is fully integrated, consistent and as streamlined as the BBB, so I'm pretty optimistic.

Yes.

Cool. Just as long as we're clear your problem there is with the RPG industry and not specific to SR4 and that in fact that particular gripe is applicable to SR3.

Actually no. Physical adepts were introduced in SR2 core rules (previously they'd only appeared in Grimoire) and the amount of material dedicated to them in the core book has remained consistent through all three iterations of the game since. Though SR4 is actually the first edition to break the mold of introducing almost exclusively combat oriented powers in the BBB.

As to metamagic, you're just plain wrong. They've never ever been in the core rules until now and that's because they were never considered essential by previous edition's developers (even though they've been around since the Grimoire 1 just like the Enchanting rules).

I was asking in context (especifically regarding Street Magic and its contents) I am fully aware of what you think about SR4, just about everyone regular on this board can't help but be.

Okay. I know how that goes. What they've done to Trinity and Adventure! was excruciatingly painful for me (and as it turned out ultimately futile in relaunching the games).

If you were particularly attached to a rules intensive way of playing SR then SR4 was bound to be a shock. But then again you've know from the start the mechanics were changing from the ground up. You've known for 6 months. Mourn your loss and move on. Or don't, keep playing SR3 or SR3R. Don't like a game don't play it.

As to the setting, I obviously disagree with you. It's still Shadowrun, just 5 years on. I've lived through equally traumatic updates between all editions and this one has been softer than SR1 to SR2. Of course, it all boils down to how you played SR in the first place (with no way being better than the other , just different). I've been GMing SR4 for 6 months now pretty regularly and it hasn't particularly changed my players' style of play or the way I play the world.

I assume you know that the new novels (at least the first batch) from Wizkids will be set in the SR3 /2065 setting?

Care to elaborate? What has changed so significantly setting wise that its no longer isntantly recognizable as Shadowrun and the Sixth World?

There were reasons FanPro believed a new edition and a complete revision of the rules was not only necessary (even if as you put it it sent them back to "square one" - personally I don't think it did) it was worth gambling a "guaranteed" fan following on. Some of those reasons are obvious to anyone who follows the RPG industry, others will not be. Regardless, FanPro did what it believed was the best thing to keep the game alive for years to come. FanPro knew from the start (and if not from the start from the very first reactions to the SR4 announcements) what was at stake and they still went ahead. It would be interesting if you considered what that implies and why FanPro might have thought following on 15 years of playtesting wasn't the way to go.

Whether you agree with the decision or not is ultimately irrelevant, because even in our little hardcore DSF community for everyone who has had such a drastic reaction to SR4 there's someone like Shadow_Prophet who thinks SR4 (despite its flaws) is a step in the right direction.

I'm willing if you are. I'd even be willing to bet on it.

Let's see:

Start with the cover art. A team of runners posing for a family portrait. I think enough has been said about that elsewhere. Compare to the cover of SR3: cartoony one can certainly argue, but things are solidly happening, and not only are they happening they're going wrong. There's no one in this scene in danger of falling asleep, while the most alert person in the SR4 cover is the rat.

Move to the opening fiction, Buzzkill. Like See How They Run, it's a basic story of a backstabbing Johnson and the run they send the team on. Like See How They Run, at the end the main character has made it out alive.

In See How They Run the story ends with Animal looking for revenge, certainly. Looking for revenge, but he hasn't found it. He's at the start of a potentially very long chase after another team on the slimmest of evidence. He's also lost someone who they really get across was close to him, his teammate. The details make it. The way Animal knows his fixer will demand extra if it's known that Animal really needs the cred. The way it's always "Flash and me", as well as the intentional incorrect use of "me". The way one of the corpers they pass by is exultant over the arrival of real coffee. See How They Run, in my opinion, oozes grit.

Then we have Buzzkill, which simply doesn't. Everything about the story screams "simple". Simple meet, simple job, simple betrayal, simple revenge. It's all over and done with neatly, there's certainty (see the tactical overlay and the Xs removing fog-of-war), and we really don't get any feel for any particular attachment any member of the team feels for another except vaguely at the very end (and brief strings of profanity). It doesn't feel gritty, it feels emotionless.

The intro by FastJack brings the grit. Unfortunately the history section doesn't carry it, I may get to that later.

I've got more (much, much more) but it'll have to wait, things came up.

~J

I'm not overly fond of the art. I think sr2's art was far more gritty than sr3's, which was comical looking which to me takes away that feel of stuff going wrong. Plus there was a pterodactyl in the background if i'm not mistaken? I don't like sr4's cover art any better.

In SR3's story, yes I'll agree, you do get a bit more feel of the bond between the characters, but then again a much smaller team if i'm not mistaken? 2 people pluss the add on of the dwarf? Where as in buzzkill you have a full team?

Anyways I may be wrong with that last part, it certainly has been a while since I read it. Let me share with you my views of Buzzkill.

Buzzkill's the first thing that introduces you to the setting. It gives you a feel of how AR works and how people interact with it on a daily basis. The meet, and whats expected in the run, are as neat and clean as they were, if my memory serves, in "See how they run". Anyways then Buzzkill brings in a part of shadowrun alot of people leave out. Legwork. The team tries to figure out if they're getting screwed or whatnot. Run goes down, bad stuff happens, main char looses 2 of his team mates but manages to get out with his hacker and mage.

So afterwards the story doesn't stop. They do the legwork they find out how/why they got screwed and found out their own fixer sold them out. The guy they're supposed to trust to get them stuff and runs, sold them out.

To me Buzzkill shows you alot more of the shadowrun world, and what you're supposed to do, than "see how they run" ever did. It emphasises the changes in the world, it emphasizes that even the guy you trust might sell you out for a grand, it emphasizes legwork.

I think its the perfect intro for sr4 (though I do remember liking SR2's story better still).

Like Disguise Skill showing up in SOTA 63, or Wilderness survival in one of the "Target" supplements. I'm surprised that neither of these were included in the SR3 core book. Both are pretty basic and essential skills.

If you look closely I'm pretty sure those are bats. Weird-looking bats I'll grant, but bats.

~J

They're Sirens. If you can lay your hands on a copy of the first edition sourcebook Paranormal Animals of North America you will see them rendered by a different artist.

Oh, this is one thing I like about SR4's BBB... they front-loaded the skills. There are several skills that aren't even fully-supported yet (Pilot Anthroform comes to mind), but I think it's better to have the full skill list right off the bat in the core book than to add skills one by one in later supplements (bleh).

Of course, they left out Enchanting, hrm... maybe they should have thought twice about that one (unless Enchanting is no longer based on a separate skill in street magic).

The decisive factor in the non-inclusion of Enchanting was probably the fact that unlike something like Pilot: Anthroform whose usage is an intuitive extension of all the other piloting rules, Enchanting skills aren't really playable without further guidelines on foci creation which would have taken up. Even Mechanics is of some use for vehicle repair without full vehicular customization or modification rules.