Shadowrun v4 - Your Experience

[kigmatzomat]

Under the SR4 model, a high-powered character (or in some cases, a specialized starting runner) can have so many dice even huge penalties like for shooting in complete darkness without any vision-enhancing cyber can be overcome.

Umm, you do know that under blind fire they should use Intuition+Skill instead of Agility+Skill, right? P.141, bottom left corner. There's nowhere near as many boosts for Intuition as there are for agility. (Intuit+Skill+2 smart-6 blind-range-partial cover) is rarely going to be more than 4 dice. A gunbunny will really be looking for the lucky shot to get past the Reaction of a secretary.

 

[Pseudonym]

Well, aside from the changes to the mechanics, how has the fluff changed? What year have they advanced the timeline too? Any notable changes to long standing NPcs? etc.

I played 1ed, 2ed and 3ed, but have yet to pick up the 4th. Major changes to mechanics aside, how has the world changed?

 

[Vocenoctum]

Well, aside from the changes to the mechanics, how has the fluff changed? What year have they advanced the timeline too? Any notable changes to long standing NPcs? etc.

I played 1ed, 2ed and 3ed, but have yet to pick up the 4th. Major changes to mechanics aside, how has the world changed?

There were lots of major changes, but I didn't buy it so I can't be specific.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I would call that a feature.

In early editions (long time since I played SR), the difference between TN 5 and TN 6 was way too large. A small additional penalty turned a sure thing into an extremely iffy test. In play, I once created a Decker who was literally waltzed through Red-5 systems, but sometimes broke a sweat against Orange-6.

I liked being able to modify things to either way, rather than simply adding modifiers to the T#, you could require more successes. It had a scalability that simple dice rolls lacked.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I just have the SR4 rulebook, no supplements. I gotta say, stuff is streamlined, but it's at the cost of a lot of flavor.

I've come to regard "simplified" or "streamlined" as buzzwords for me having to do too much work with a system. It makes it more accessible, sure, but when I learned games back in the day, a learning curve was perfectly acceptable. The players that we had that never learned the rules, wouldn't learn them with a simple system either.

I do like wireless hacking. I'm not sure what the big gripe about it is. In the future, expect everything to incorporate wireless computers. Guns, clothing, books, coffee mugs...everything new willl be chipped for some purpose or other.

I think the problem is not so much that things are accessible, but that they are so easily accessed and compromised, yet security doesn't react in a manner that closes obvious gaping holes.

 

[Imperialus]

Well, aside from the changes to the mechanics, how has the fluff changed? What year have they advanced the timeline too? Any notable changes to long standing NPcs? etc.

I played 1ed, 2ed and 3ed, but have yet to pick up the 4th. Major changes to mechanics aside, how has the world changed?

Biggest change NPC wise is that Captain Chaos is dead... He went down with the ship when shadowland crashed.

The timeline has advanced to 2070.

The biggest timeline development is the double whammy of the second crash and Winternight. The second crash is fairly streight forward, basically Deus continues his bid for world domination and the matrix is destroyed in the process of killing him. Winternight was a crazy Norse doomsday cult who tried to free Loki and bring about Ragnarok by causing chaos around the globe, in praticular by setting of a dozen or so tactical nukes most of the attacks failed but a few cities (can't remember which) got a little crispy.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Well, aside from the changes to the mechanics, how has the fluff changed? What year have they advanced the timeline too? Any notable changes to long standing NPcs? etc.

I played 1ed, 2ed and 3ed, but have yet to pick up the 4th. Major changes to mechanics aside, how has the world changed?

The biggest change is the wireless nature of the matrix, which is both a system and setting adjustment. The pocketsec has been replaced by a Comm. Not a huge difference to the common joe but major to a runner. Comms have the power of a full cyberdeck, plus they can provide computing power to various devices which eliminates the need for the most common cyber.

Cybereyes? Replaced by contact lenses or glasses. Imagelink is handled via radio (wifi) or an induction system across the skin (skinlink) to the Comm.

Smartlink? The gun has wifi or skinlink and talks to the contacts or glasses.

Datajack? Get a set of trodes built into a hat/helmet/headband or a small jar of disposable nanopaste and get direct neural interface.

VCR? trodes (and current gen datajacks) are now capable of interfacing with those "hind brain" nerves the old VCR used to touch. Simply get trodes/jacks, put a simsense module on your Comm, and buy a relatively cheap Command program to be a rigger. (There is still a VCR module, but it is now a cybernetic co-processor that provides bonus dice. Very essence cheap)

Cyber ears? earwigs with tech embedded. Uses wifi/skinlink to share audio feeds.

Headware radio? add a subvocal mike to your earbuds and your comm can direct-link to other devices in range. Add some encryption and you've got a secure channel.


Most every device has "Augmented Reality" (AR) interfaces. Imagine a virtual dashboard broadcast to your Comm and displayed by your contacts. You interact either with the Comm's keyboard/pointer (think a Treo or Blackberry), datajack/trodes, or with feedback gloves (Johnny Mnemonic, only more like leather driving gloves).

Everything comes by default with some AR presence, at the very least in the form of the RFID tag. Walk into a store and you may not find prices posted. Pick up an item and your Comm grabs the RFID tag data (which may include a little sales brochure) and queries the price. BTW, this means you can be tracked by your RFID tags. They don't have long range but there are tag readers everywhere. "The Man" (let's say "Mall Security") can track you as you pass through each store's security scanner. Your tags don't say "Owned by Evil Shadowrunner" or anything but how many other people will be wearing *exactly* what you do? And I do mean exactly, they'll even know what kind of underwear you are wearing.

Appliances and vehicles have an interactive AR component. Your car projects a HUD via AR; less distracting to other people and fewer parts to wear out. AR often gives you a bonus as it provides a dynamic interface that changes based on what you are doing or at the very least, access to a real-time help menu.

Going full VR requires datajack/trodes and a relatively inexpensive simsense module. Hotsim is enabled by slipping some cred to the geek at the RadioHut. Riggers just need some specialized software (Command utility, legal & cheap) on their Comm to get the full effect of an old VCR and can be completely cyber free. Hellooooo rigger adept.


System wise it means that you can hack people's comms directly. SR matrix security has always been either tissue paper or a bunker and this extends that to the common man. Every joe schmoe has a comm, meaning every joe schmoe is a potential target for hackers. Joe's main defense is the same as other sheep-like herdbeast: sheer numbers to keep the odds low and having nothing that is particularly of value.

For a runner it is a problem. Most people use a 2-layer comm system. They keep a "legit" comm around that holds their current fake ID and that does all the stupid things that joe schmoe would do. Then they have a "working" comm that is often completely off-net to run their combat toys. On a run they keep the 2-layer system with the "working" comm connected to their toys but with a highly protected "secure" comm to allow communication. That way even if the "secure" comm network gets cracked, their guns don't eject their clips and their imagelink doesn't display goatse.

 

[Elf Witch]

I have very mixed feelings about SR4. Yes the rules are more streamlined and easier to grasp for newbies but I think they have compromised some of the flavor that made the game special to me.

I really dislike what they have done with magic. I liked the differences between shamans and hermatics, now they are to a like. That is a biggie right their for me.

Now I can see why they added wireless but it has some flaws that I don't like like the ease of bypassing security. while a trode net allows mages to use the net without sacrificing essence I always thought the entire idea of having a datajack as just so part of the flavor of the jacked in world of Shadowrun.

I don't like Technomancers they just bug me.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I wouldn't.

For me, the whole point of SR is that the PCs - short of having the right cyber or magic - are not James Bond, Batman, or a high-level D&D character. I like the fact that the SR equivalent to a 20th level D&D character can't just blithely face down a couple of starting runners armed with pistols because he knows his stats completely protect him from any real danger, or take on a platoon of soldiers knowing he'll walk away with a few scratches.

I never encountered a situation in SR 3 in which a regular (unmodified) platoon of soldiers could really touch a fully fledged runner team, aside from maybe using mortars and antivehicle missiles (preferably in the first round) - or (against many runners - Shotguns). A single runner would probably be taken down (at some point, combat and karma pool simply don't cut it anymore), but I don't think that this changed with SR 4. (Except that's the Edge attribute and the Dodge skill that will become insufficient).

Instead, the game simply failed in so many situations that weren't really life threatening. If a character is moderate injured, and wants to pick a lock, suddenly the easy TN 4 turns into a challenging TN 6. Or think of the Decker example - When an Orange 6 system becomes more danagerous than a Red 5 system, things are off...
In fact, most the time, runners had it very easy to eliminate most of the high TN modifiers - the first step was using a smartgun (or for ranges beyond long, use a Scope) and combine it with vision enhancement hardware. I once played a character that had Infrared Vision, Low-Light Vision, Low-Frequence Eye Lamps, Ultrasight, Electronic Scope 3, aSmartgun and a Cyberarm with Gyroscope implanted. Target numbers rarely exceeded 3 or 4 and often enough were just 2. He was limited to Pistols, naturally, but it worked quit well. (I also grew very fond of the Squirt Gun and Capsule ammuntion filled with Narcojet or Gamma Scopolamin. The mundane Runners sleep spells...)

And the ultimate target-number dropper was the shotgun. Maximize Choke, and kill everything in sight, unless it is armed with hardened armor. It doesn't matter that the enemies target number for his constitution roll would never exceed 2 this way - he still had to overcome the n successes of the attack roll itself, before even begin to staging down the damage. And this was just the first shot.

Ah, the good old days... It was fun, for a while. But in the end, it just hurt to much... (It didn't help in our group that there weren't so many good adventures, either. And far to much involved the Johnson fracking with the Runners, which gets particularly tiresome...)

 

[mmu1]

I never encountered a situation in SR 3 in which a regular (unmodified) platoon of soldiers could really touch a fully fledged runner team, aside from maybe using mortars and antivehicle missiles (preferably in the first round) - or (against many runners - Shotguns). A single runner would probably be taken down (at some point, combat and karma pool simply don't cut it anymore), but I don't think that this changed with SR 4. (Except that's the Edge attribute and the Dodge skill that will become insufficient).

Really? I guess it just comes down to the way the games we played in have been GMed, because your experiences just don't match mine. Actual soldiers (not goons with assault rifles, professional troops - with military-grade weapons, ammo and armor, and the training to use them) would be a very serious threat in any game I played in.

Same thing with target numbers, even someone really twinked-out still ought to have to deal with the +4 TN for cover often enough that - while TNs of 3 or 4 will be common - you can't count on them. (and things get worse if you actually enforce all the mods for movement, switching targets, etc.)

Finally, I have to admit shotguns never entered into the equation, because, again, in all the games I played in the GM had either always house-ruled the ridiculous choke/spread rules, or everyone at the table agreed to unilaterally suspend any use of shot rounds...