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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7091097" data-attributes="member: 6775031">One of the accusations leveled against Shadowrun, especially in the older editions, was the highly asymmetric play. A rigger, decker, shaman, and street samurai were quite often not interacting with the same mechanics. I understand that it's gotten less asymmetrical in recent editions, but I haven't read enough of those books to say for certain.I'm not entirely certain that I follow the premise, though. I mean, D&amp;D doesn't seem that asymmetrical between players (leaving out the DM, who is not a player); the difference between a fighter and a wizard isn't that significant, in terms of the mechanics involved, except that the fighter takes more Attack actions and the wizard takes more Cast A Spell actions. Especially in the old days, before the advent of spontaneous casting, there was only one mechanic for spells and every class was somewhere on the spectrum between fighter and wizard; and even then, the wizard would have to make some attacks now and then, since they didn't have enough spell slots to cast spells every round. If you write up the various weapons that the fighter is carrying as though they were 4E basic attack powers, the difference almost falls away to one of presentation.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7091097, member: 6775031"] One of the accusations leveled against Shadowrun, especially in the older editions, was the highly asymmetric play. A rigger, decker, shaman, and street samurai were quite often not interacting with the same mechanics. I understand that it's gotten [I]less[/I] asymmetrical in recent editions, but I haven't read enough of those books to say for certain. I'm not entirely certain that I follow the premise, though. I mean, D&D doesn't seem [I]that[/I] asymmetrical between players (leaving out the DM, who is not a player); the difference between a fighter and a wizard isn't that significant, in terms of the mechanics involved, except that the fighter takes more Attack actions and the wizard takes more Cast A Spell actions. Especially in the old days, before the advent of spontaneous casting, there was only one mechanic for spells and every class was somewhere on the spectrum between fighter and wizard; and even then, the wizard would have to make some attacks now and then, since they didn't have enough spell slots to cast spells every round. If you write up the various weapons that the fighter is carrying as though they were 4E basic attack powers, the difference almost falls away to one of presentation. [/QUOTE]

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