Shadowrun: What's the likelihood of a complete system overhaul?

[Yora]

I think Shadowrun might work quite well as a setting for the Year Zero system.

 

[kigmatzomat]

There was one thing that threw me and it was wireless devices. Like, I get how useful wireless devices where, but, for reasons I did't understand, a decker could hack into your cyberware because it was also online. If I were a cybered up Street Samurai, why on God's green Earth would I leave myself vulnerable to hacking by leaving my cyberware connected to the WIFI? Obviously it was to give the decker a chance to defend the group as well as participate in attacks on enemies as he hacks their cyberware, but it just struck me as monumentally stupid. I can accept magic returning and goblinization, but I sure as hell couldn't accept professional killers keeping their cyberlimbs connected to the WIFI.

I held similar opinions but after seeing how many people use cloud-based video cameras inside their house, I have circled around to "convenience trumps effort" combined with "because that's 98% of what is on the market"

Do I think there should be a lifestyle cost or something to de-wifi devices? Oh yeah. And runners should carry two mobiles: one set up as a normie, broadcasting all the things normal people leave turned on connected to glasses/earbuds, and one that is completely offline hooked to weapons and such, only enabled for online when you need a tacnet.

TacNets were a genius move to provide a rational for the samurai to go online. Want your eyes, ears, and guns to feed the soldier-in-a-box AI data? Gonna need to turn on at least one radio, and one is all it takes. And that creates the need for a combat decker. Do you want the benefit of a TacNet? You need someone to guard the wifi.

Tacnets also gave Deckers a target. Are your foes so jacked up they have a TacNet? Hope your decker can put a stop to that dreck.

Mechanics-wise, switching from variable TNs to a fixed value reduced a lot of complexity. Not everyone can tell whether +2 dice is better than a -1 TN. Those of us who could, did very well, the rest got irked. Fixed TNs are a predictable hit rate with simple math.

 

[JediSoth]

What if Catalyst kept their version for all the die-hard fans who like the complexity and licensed out a simpler version to Pinnacle for a Savage Worlds port?

 

[aramis erak]

What if Catalyst kept their version for all the die-hard fans who like the complexity and licensed out a simpler version to Pinnacle for a Savage Worlds port?

You're not the first to suggest it. I found two different fan conversions in a quick google. Neither the one I found last year.

There also are fan conversions for GURPS and Genesys.
The genesys one I found on GMBinder is 84 pages and laid out in very close to Genesys Corebook style.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I was thinking the same thing. A radical change in how things work risks alienating their current fans with no indication that new fans will replace them or surpass their numbers. i.e. It's a tough spot to be in. I'm a fan of the idea that they should work to streamline the rules while retaining as much of the Shadowrun feel as possible. I played a little bit of Shadowrun in the late 80s and early 90s, but it wasn't one I played very frequently. I get a flood of warm nostalgia anytime I see art from the 1st edition book.

And that's fair.

I've just seen versions of this argument before, particularly regarding the Hero System. I've watched people come in and say "The game wouldn't be slowly dying if you'd streamline it." But when pressed on how that's supposed to work, it never addresses the fact that by the time you streamline it enough (which is inevitably going to involve simplification) you're now trying to fish in pools that others have had staked out for potentially a decade or more now (for example, are you, essentially, trying to get the people who are Savage Worlds fans? Mutants and Masterminds fans? What makes you think you're going to peel many of them off?) But since you're inevitably going to lose things along the way (and if you claim otherwise I'm going to pretty much laugh at you) you'll lose some people who've stuck with it, and might even be attracted now even if its not a design that lands toward the general preference swing in this period.

So given all that, a redesign makes sense because--?

There's a lot to like about Shadowrun. While I've alway preferred Cyberpunk, I'll have to admit the setting for SR has always been pretty good and over the years has changed with the times much better than CP. I've always liked character generation and the way you prioritize what's important to you. Do you want to be a Troll? Do you want your lifestyle to be your lowest prority? How about Skills or Attributes? You have a lot of flexibility.

The complication is, of course, as you reference here, that unlike the Hero System which is pretty much all about the system for most people (though there's a lot of setting trailing through it to some extent at the Champions end of it), SR isn't only about the mechanics, but the setting, too. But I think people who think its only about the setting are projecting a bit.

I picked up 5th edition a few years back and after reading the rules came to the conclusion that running this game didn't interest me. It's been a while, but I just felt the rules for magic, riggers, etc., etc. were all overly complicated when taken in the aggregate. Figuring out a mage wasn't too complicated, but when adding everything else it just seemed like a bigger headache than I wanted.

Its a defensible point. But then, that's been true since 1e (which is the last version I've run extensively, though I've owned every edition but 3e, Anarchy and 6e). I personally think from my one session of it that 5e was at least as manageable as 1e, and had less problems, but depending on where you come from, that can seem damning with faint praise.

There was one thing that threw me and it was wireless devices. Like, I get how useful wireless devices where, but, for reasons I did't understand, a decker could hack into your cyberware because it was also online. If I were a cybered up Street Samurai, why on God's green Earth would I leave myself vulnerable to hacking by leaving my cyberware connected to the WIFI? Obviously it was to give the decker a chance to defend the group as well as participate in attacks on enemies as he hacks their cyberware, but it just struck me as monumentally stupid. I can accept magic returning and goblinization, but I sure as hell couldn't accept professional killers keeping their cyberlimbs connected to the WIFI.

Well, it is clearly a design decision for the reason you say, but its not like if someone seriously wanted to avoid the risk they couldn't choose non-connected devices. But the tradeoff is that even in SR, as a sammy you can spend a lot of time fighting people that don't have a decker, so do you want that extra edge with the risk that when you do fight a group with a decker or a technomancer you're more vulnerable? Its not actually a clear-cut decision from the position of sammy's as a whole.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What if Catalyst kept their version for all the die-hard fans who like the complexity and licensed out a simpler version to Pinnacle for a Savage Worlds port?

There effectively already is a version of that; its just not official.

 

[MGibster]

I held similar opinions but after seeing how many people use cloud-based video cameras inside their house, I have circled around to "convenience trumps effort" combined with "because that's 98% of what is on the market"

Oh, sure. It's happening because a lot of people don't really take security into mind and also a lot of this is still new to people. But let's say you're a decker and I'm a street samurai and we're running a job together. You're going to make sure my wifi is off for two reasons. The first being that having to protect my system form other deckers is distracting you from your main mission. The second is that if my systems fail then not only is the mission endangered but your life might also be endangered. (I think in 5th the decker had to go with the team on runs and couldn't just sit in an office far away.) The problem of runners going on missions with their wifi on would quickly take care of itself.

Do I think there should be a lifestyle cost or something to de-wifi devices? Oh yeah. And runners should carry two mobiles: one set up as a normie, broadcasting all the things normal people leave turned on connected to glasses/earbuds, and one that is completely offline hooked to weapons and such, only enabled for online when you need a tacnet.

Maybe I missed something. What was the advantage to have my legs connected to the wifi during a mission? It's not like I'm waiting for a firmware update in the middle of a firefight, right?

Well, it is clearly a design decision for the reason you say, but its not like if someone seriously wanted to avoid the risk they couldn't choose non-connected devices. But the tradeoff is that even in SR, as a sammy you can spend a lot of time fighting people that don't have a decker, so do you want that extra edge with the risk that when you do fight a group with a decker or a technomancer you're more vulnerable? Its not actually a clear-cut decision from the position of sammy's as a whole.

It's been a while since I've read 5th edition. But the risks of having my legs rendered useless didn't seem worth the benefit of keeping my limbs hooked up to the wifi while I'm in combat.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Maybe I missed something. What was the advantage to have my legs connected to the wifi during a mission? It's not like I'm waiting for a firmware update in the middle of a firefight, right?
It's been a while since I've read 5th edition. But the risks of having my legs rendered useless didn't seem worth the benefit of keeping my limbs hooked up to the wifi while I'm in combat.

You skipped right over TacNets. Maybe they didn't make it past SR4. They added an extra dice pool based on the number of sensors hooked to it, which were only available to someone who was on that network.

You want your smartlink to get the bonus? Your pocket sec had to have an active radio connection and be connected to your body's cyber "bus". (I forget if they called it the PAN or DNI or something else, but its how a cyberdeck in a leg would send data to your cybereyes). At least your pocket sec should be running much better firewalls than your leg, but if something gets through that, they have access to your cyber bits.

TacNets were a no-brainer for riggers, who might have 3 or 4 vehicles/drones providing targeting data for 1 or 2 armed drones. It took a drone that was a pretty poor shot and made it into a competent combatant.

Oddly, Mages were also happy with tacnets. Some AR glasses, earbuds, and smartlink also turned them from mediocre to decent combatants.

 

[aramis erak]

And that's fair.

I've just seen versions of this argument before, particularly regarding the Hero System. I've watched people come in and say "The game wouldn't be slowly dying if you'd streamline it." But when pressed on how that's supposed to work, it never addresses the fact that by the time you streamline it enough (which is inevitably going to involve simplification) you're now trying to fish in pools that others have had staked out for potentially a decade or more now (for example, are you, essentially, trying to get the people who are Savage Worlds fans? Mutants and Masterminds fans? What makes you think you're going to peel many of them off?) But since you're inevitably going to lose things along the way (and if you claim otherwise I'm going to pretty much laugh at you) you'll lose some people who've stuck with it, and might even be attracted now even if its not a design that lands toward the general preference swing in this period.

In the case of the Hero System, they have simplified it... twice. CNM, and the very slight reduction from 5 to 6.
Neither got good responses from extant Champions players. Neither brought a flood of new players, either.
It's too early to judge reactions to Champions Now!...

For SR, the key tropes need to be identified, and supported. I've only run 1E...
but I've a copy of 3e.
the archetypes I recall being important:

• Decker
• Street Samurai
• Shaman
• Wizard
• Physical Adept
• Rigger
• Corporate Bureaucrat
• Corporate killer.

The various Metahuman tropes were not uniform across them...

 

[MGibster]

n the case of the Hero System, they have simplified it... twice. CNM, and the very slight reduction from 5 to 6.
Neither got good responses from extant Champions players. Neither brought a flood of new players, either.
It's too early to judge reactions to Champions Now!...

Quite frankly, I think systems like GURPS and Champions are currently out of style. Which is too bad, GURPS was a game I enjoyed quite a bit and they had an extensive body of excellent books produced over the years.

For SR, the key tropes need to be identified, and supported. I've only run 1E...
but I've a copy of 3e.

I'm taking a look at 1st edition, and I forgot that they didn't really have defined roles for characters like Cyberpunk did. The archtypes in 1st edition include burned out mage, tribesman, detective, decker, former company man, and interestingly both a merc and a street samurai. Really, I think you can break it down into four or five basic types.

Mage - Shaman, Wizard, Adept
Fighter - Street Samurai, Merc, Gang Member
Rogue - Cat Burglar, Former Company Man, Detective
Technologist - Decker, Rigger, Med Tech