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Shadowrun Sixth Edition Announced!
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<blockquote data-quote="ParanoydStyle" data-source="post: 7778879" data-attributes="member: 6984451"><p>1) This is a huge amount of information to process.</p><p>2) Based on a cursory skim, they are doing a GREAT job in terms of this launch. This is a brilliantly coordinated media blitz. Hats off to Jason, Randall, and Loren, and the rest of the CGL team for that.</p><p>3) As soon as I saw (on Twitter) that Shadowrun 6E was a thing, my immediate thought was: "Well, they'd have to try pretty hard to frag it up worse than Fifth Edition. I should know, I was one of the people that wrote Fifth Edition."</p><p>4) As someone who fought HARD against Limits in 5E when I was on the design team, I feel vindicated to see them being given the boot in the new edition. They were and are a terrible idea.</p><p>5) I have no idea how to feel about what they announced on the Matrix rules. It's going to depend entirely on how it's executed. The closest thing I have to insight on that is that I don't think "cyberjack" is a very cool sounding name. I think I'd think that even if it weren't just a lazy portmanteau of datajack and cyberdeck. It's been years since I've thought about this stuff but IIRC Marks were another bad Aaron Pavao idea that I'm happy to see go. </p><p>6) What they're trying to do with Edge is super cool, and I'm interested to see how it plays out in terms of execution.</p><p>7) "Restrictions on gear and cyberwear are reduced at character creation so you can get most anything at the start of the game ("opening up the toy box")." I read this mostly as "deckers are allowed to have cyberdecks worth using at chargen" which was another hill I nearly died on during the design of 5E. So again, I feel vindicated. </p><p>8) "Combat will move faster and be deadlier, but also will have more flexibility due to the new Edge system." When has anyone ever complained about combat in Shadowrun not being DEADLY enough? Srsly. Not counting 1st Edition which was actually like the most padded sumo RPG of all time because of the ridiculous way that soak rolls worked.</p><p>9) "The action economy and initiative system are getting an overhaul to speed combat, reduce analysis paralysis, and to prevent faster characters from dominating every combat encounter." As written, this SOUNDS AWESOME. I just desperately hope it doesn't MEAN "we're switching over to a hard limit of one action per character per turn because that's how D&D5E does it and have you seen how much money they're making!?!?". </p><p>10) "Keeping with the "the Shadowrun world is sixty years and six months in our future" rule of thumb, the new system will be set in 2080." Good. It's a damn good rule of thumb. Every time I watch the new Ghost In The Shell hotness it's always "Newport City - 2029 AD" REGARDLESS of how close CURRENT YEAR is catching up to that date. It's like, really guys, we're gonna have prosthetic bodies and cyberbrains in the next ten years? REALLY?</p><p>11) That ork with a molotov is sexy as hell.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It might have something to do with the fact that Fifth Edition is fragging terrible.</p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p>It's actually not THAT far off from how we/they did it with 5E. The freelancers learned about it at a super secret meeting and sworn to secrecy at GenCon '12, the announce was planned for GAMA Trade Show '13, and the release for Origins in June. So, there are a couple months less interval between announce and release, but I have a feeling that CGL has good reasons for doing it this way. No, I don't know what they are. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>How and why would this stop you? Shadowrun and Shadowrun: Anarchy are designed to scratch two very different itches. The former is a very crunchy simulationist tactical RPG. The latter is a Story First storygame. I don't see how one precludes the other.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'd recommend trying 4E if you can find it free, cheap, or on sale. I can't compare it to 6E obviously because I haven't seen 6E but of the five editions of Shadowrun that ARE out on the market, I'm firmly of the opinion that 4E is the best. 4E is less crunchy and better than 5E so if you like 4E you might like 6E because it looks like it's aiming to be less crunchy and better than 5E. Typing numbers followed by the letter E is losing all meaning. I'd offer the same advice to @<em><strong><u><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6775031" target="_blank">Saelorn</a></u></strong></em>.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't know what Genesys is, but nonetheless ding!ding!ding! we got a winner! You're absolutely right.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Emphasis mine. Speaking as an author of Shadowrun Fifth Edition? 5E WAS a bloated 4E. How did 4E lose you, if you don't mind my asking? It's my favorite edition, with third being a close second.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Ha! Fraggin' Ha! The Laughing Man strikes again?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I played 2nd. I WROTE 5th (not all of it obviously, but I was on the design team, involved in talks about its development for MONTHS, playtested it, wrote a chapter of it, and wrote the first adventure published for it). So I think I'm pretty damn qualified when I say...</p><p></p><p><strong>You. Are. Dead. Wrong.</strong></p><p></p><p>Shadowrun 4E very likely had design goals that aimed at simplifying the rules and making the game more playable and more accessible. In any case, that is what was achieved. 4E is the best and most playable mainline edition of Shadowrun ever (I haven't read or played Anarchy nor will I be, hence 'mainline').</p><p></p><p>Shadowrun 5E had completely incoherent and contradictory design goals seriously exacerbated by a major lack of any kind of strong top-down direction or vision. Competing bad ideas included grognards frothing at the mouth to undo virtually everything 4E had accomplished, turning commlinks back to cyberdecks, etcetera etcetera. Call that the 'I Miss The 80s' faction. And yes, nostalgia was their sole design strategy. Compounding this, there was the somewhat-more-officially-sanctioned design strategem of Aaron "Games Do Not Have To Be Fun*" Pavao whose foolproof mathematical system for creating a perfectly balanced RPG was...none of those things. Except mathematical. It WAS annoyingly mathematical. Unsurprisingly this resulted in the bloated wreck that is 5E. 5E was so bad that it actually ruined Shadowrun for me for half a decade.</p><p></p><p>Even accounting for how counterintuitive it is trying to hit a Target Number of 11 with a pool of six-sided dice, 2nd Edition is far, far more playable than Fifth.</p><p></p><p>* When we were arguing about who knows which of the disastrous design decisions I saw being made in SR5, Aaron browbeat me into talking to him over the phone, which I was not remotely comfortable with. Anyway, that's the most memorable quote from the conversation. He actually said that. For reals, guys. Probably the single strongest influence over the design of 5E was a man who unironically believed that it was not a priority for games to be fun.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ParanoydStyle, post: 7778879, member: 6984451"] 1) This is a huge amount of information to process. 2) Based on a cursory skim, they are doing a GREAT job in terms of this launch. This is a brilliantly coordinated media blitz. Hats off to Jason, Randall, and Loren, and the rest of the CGL team for that. 3) As soon as I saw (on Twitter) that Shadowrun 6E was a thing, my immediate thought was: "Well, they'd have to try pretty hard to frag it up worse than Fifth Edition. I should know, I was one of the people that wrote Fifth Edition." 4) As someone who fought HARD against Limits in 5E when I was on the design team, I feel vindicated to see them being given the boot in the new edition. They were and are a terrible idea. 5) I have no idea how to feel about what they announced on the Matrix rules. It's going to depend entirely on how it's executed. The closest thing I have to insight on that is that I don't think "cyberjack" is a very cool sounding name. I think I'd think that even if it weren't just a lazy portmanteau of datajack and cyberdeck. It's been years since I've thought about this stuff but IIRC Marks were another bad Aaron Pavao idea that I'm happy to see go. 6) What they're trying to do with Edge is super cool, and I'm interested to see how it plays out in terms of execution. 7) "Restrictions on gear and cyberwear are reduced at character creation so you can get most anything at the start of the game ("opening up the toy box")." I read this mostly as "deckers are allowed to have cyberdecks worth using at chargen" which was another hill I nearly died on during the design of 5E. So again, I feel vindicated. 8) "Combat will move faster and be deadlier, but also will have more flexibility due to the new Edge system." When has anyone ever complained about combat in Shadowrun not being DEADLY enough? Srsly. Not counting 1st Edition which was actually like the most padded sumo RPG of all time because of the ridiculous way that soak rolls worked. 9) "The action economy and initiative system are getting an overhaul to speed combat, reduce analysis paralysis, and to prevent faster characters from dominating every combat encounter." As written, this SOUNDS AWESOME. I just desperately hope it doesn't MEAN "we're switching over to a hard limit of one action per character per turn because that's how D&D5E does it and have you seen how much money they're making!?!?". 10) "Keeping with the "the Shadowrun world is sixty years and six months in our future" rule of thumb, the new system will be set in 2080." Good. It's a damn good rule of thumb. Every time I watch the new Ghost In The Shell hotness it's always "Newport City - 2029 AD" REGARDLESS of how close CURRENT YEAR is catching up to that date. It's like, really guys, we're gonna have prosthetic bodies and cyberbrains in the next ten years? REALLY? 11) That ork with a molotov is sexy as hell. It might have something to do with the fact that Fifth Edition is fragging terrible. It's actually not THAT far off from how we/they did it with 5E. The freelancers learned about it at a super secret meeting and sworn to secrecy at GenCon '12, the announce was planned for GAMA Trade Show '13, and the release for Origins in June. So, there are a couple months less interval between announce and release, but I have a feeling that CGL has good reasons for doing it this way. No, I don't know what they are. How and why would this stop you? Shadowrun and Shadowrun: Anarchy are designed to scratch two very different itches. The former is a very crunchy simulationist tactical RPG. The latter is a Story First storygame. I don't see how one precludes the other. I'd recommend trying 4E if you can find it free, cheap, or on sale. I can't compare it to 6E obviously because I haven't seen 6E but of the five editions of Shadowrun that ARE out on the market, I'm firmly of the opinion that 4E is the best. 4E is less crunchy and better than 5E so if you like 4E you might like 6E because it looks like it's aiming to be less crunchy and better than 5E. Typing numbers followed by the letter E is losing all meaning. I'd offer the same advice to @[I][B][U][URL="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6775031"]Saelorn[/URL][/U][/B][/I]. I don't know what Genesys is, but nonetheless ding!ding!ding! we got a winner! You're absolutely right. Emphasis mine. Speaking as an author of Shadowrun Fifth Edition? 5E WAS a bloated 4E. How did 4E lose you, if you don't mind my asking? It's my favorite edition, with third being a close second. Ha! Fraggin' Ha! The Laughing Man strikes again? I played 2nd. I WROTE 5th (not all of it obviously, but I was on the design team, involved in talks about its development for MONTHS, playtested it, wrote a chapter of it, and wrote the first adventure published for it). So I think I'm pretty damn qualified when I say... [B]You. Are. Dead. Wrong.[/B] Shadowrun 4E very likely had design goals that aimed at simplifying the rules and making the game more playable and more accessible. In any case, that is what was achieved. 4E is the best and most playable mainline edition of Shadowrun ever (I haven't read or played Anarchy nor will I be, hence 'mainline'). Shadowrun 5E had completely incoherent and contradictory design goals seriously exacerbated by a major lack of any kind of strong top-down direction or vision. Competing bad ideas included grognards frothing at the mouth to undo virtually everything 4E had accomplished, turning commlinks back to cyberdecks, etcetera etcetera. Call that the 'I Miss The 80s' faction. And yes, nostalgia was their sole design strategy. Compounding this, there was the somewhat-more-officially-sanctioned design strategem of Aaron "Games Do Not Have To Be Fun*" Pavao whose foolproof mathematical system for creating a perfectly balanced RPG was...none of those things. Except mathematical. It WAS annoyingly mathematical. Unsurprisingly this resulted in the bloated wreck that is 5E. 5E was so bad that it actually ruined Shadowrun for me for half a decade. Even accounting for how counterintuitive it is trying to hit a Target Number of 11 with a pool of six-sided dice, 2nd Edition is far, far more playable than Fifth. * When we were arguing about who knows which of the disastrous design decisions I saw being made in SR5, Aaron browbeat me into talking to him over the phone, which I was not remotely comfortable with. Anyway, that's the most memorable quote from the conversation. He actually said that. For reals, guys. Probably the single strongest influence over the design of 5E was a man who unironically believed that it was not a priority for games to be fun. [/QUOTE]
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