D&D 4E OT: Shadowrun 4E announced

[Vocenoctum]

My personal non-shadowrun-playing opinions of this?

1: Riggers and Deckers unified
----A good thing. The decker rules as well as the rigging rules used to lose me totally in read-throughs- and with no game to play them in, I'm not forced to muscle through them and understand them.

Like I said earlier in the threads, Hackers are more like Riggers than Deckers. They folded the computer stuff into the Rigger and ditched them too. The "lose me totally" thing is more based on the lack of readability for the SR rules IMO. Rigging was generally easy though, do you mean the vehicle combat rules?

It just seems to me you can only stray so far from the SR game system before it's not really the same system anymore. (Leading to it's own problems, even as it "solves" other problems.) Coupled with the setting's degrading, it brings out the harshness in some of us old folks.

It's sort of like Battletech: Dark Ages. It'd probably sting less if they renamed it from Shadowrun.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Strangely enough, until I recently downloaded NSCRG, I didn't even know there WAS a point-buy system for Shadowrun. I've only had two or three Shadowrun books (SR2, SR3, and the California Free State one) and never saw a mention. As I said, expedient, but not as quirky, sadly.

The point buy was done in the Companion (for 2nd edition, then 3rd edition), sort of a bunch of optional rules, though not as extensive as Unearthed Arcana.
With SR4 now though, you could probably pick up Magic in the Shadows and a couple other books cheap.

 

[Henry]

It just seems to me you can only stray so far from the SR game system before it's not really the same system anymore. (Leading to it's own problems, even as it "solves" other problems.) Coupled with the setting's degrading, it brings out the harshness in some of us old folks.

Now don't you go all Diaglo on me too, Vocenoctum. I wouldn't call what has been released yet "far from the same system", and there's a lot more to be addressed.

 

[apesamongus]

3: Open Tests gone
---could someone please refresh me about open tests? Is that the "exploding d6" mechanic or something I'm blanking out on?

Roll without a target number and take the highest result. Very useful mechanic. It's a ing shame to remove something so overwhelmingly useful. It produced a nice way to get a result that had diminishing returns from higher skill and was a very nice opposed roll mechanic. Again, I repeat that these new designers can rot in hell.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Roll without a target number and take the highest result. Very useful mechanic. It's a ing shame to remove something so overwhelmingly useful. It produced a nice way to get a result that had diminishing returns from higher skill and was a very nice opposed roll mechanic. Again, I repeat that these new designers can rot in hell.

I think you're one of the few people who found it useful. The vibe I've gotten is that people either don't care one way or the other for it, or don't like the fact that a guy with Stealth 1 can make you roll 27s to see him at all.

It's also NOT useful for an opposed roll. Opposing skills directly against a fixed target number gets you more accurate results, since the better person will usually win, but it's not guaranteed that they will.

One of the things they've left unsaid is if SR4 will even use a dice pool system.

Brad

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Again, I repeat that these new designers can rot in hell.

I take back every nasty thought I ever had about Diaglo. His rants are nothing compared to sheer idiocy that seems to be de riguer among certain SR fanatics.

hat of SR4 know no limits, indeed.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I think you're one of the few people who found it useful. The vibe I've gotten is that people either don't care one way or the other for it, or don't like the fact that a guy with Stealth 1 can make you roll 27s to see him at all.

I can see it's purpose, and never had a problem with it. It's removal doesn't matter to me, but the idea that a Stealth 1 guy rolling a 27 means the system is broken doesn't vibe.
Odd's are, the higher score will still win, the odds just aren't the same as the straight contested rolls. In addiition, like I said before, it was a lot easier than rolling over and over to do resisted rolls.

It's also NOT useful for an opposed roll. Opposing skills directly against a fixed target number gets you more accurate results, since the better person will usually win, but it's not guaranteed that they will.

The better person will win more often, true. Whether that's ACCURATE or not can't really be proven. It's a game, and the numbers mean nothing except in comparison and in dice tests.

It's just personal preference.

 

[fanboy2000]

I take back every nasty thought I ever had about Diaglo.

Doesn't Diaglo play in 3e games occasionally? When I joined, I seem to remember him saying he was in a 3e City of the Spider Queen adventure or something. *scratches head with forepaw*

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

The better person will win more often, true. Whether that's ACCURATE or not can't really be proven. It's a game, and the numbers mean nothing except in comparison and in dice tests.

It's just personal preference.

True...

However, the Open Test is far more open to wildly improbable results, which *I* think is annoying as all get out.

Brad

 

[Felon]

Setting mostly. Shadowrunners may not be very good heroes, but at the end of the adventure, the world was a better place. Even if it just meant the bad guys were dealt a setback. Shadowruns are crimes because laws are broken, but in most cases they were commited in extra-territorial terrain, and "didn't count". Lone Star was full of inept racists, but they kept their jobs because the government was frankly vacant.
Corporations ran the world, and resisting them was fun. Humanis was the enemy, Aztechnology was irredeemably evil and bugs didn't have civil rights. No human with a silly name like Spinrad could repeatedly thwart Lofwyr and get away with it.

Yes, rebellion was an aspect of Shadowrun I liked a great deal. Do they still even have the feather-headdress-wearing shaman and tribal warriors and such that were part of the "take back the world" sentiment of SR 1 & 2, or is everyone just out to make a yen?

Rebellion has a practical value from a motivational point-of-view. When characters are rebelling, they have some good reasons to keep shadowrunning after they make a few million yen. Rebellions are expensive, and when the government and megacorps are your enemey, you don't get to retire. If you're just some criminals, then there's no reason to retire to some crystal palace in the sky once you get that one big score.