It’s not mine to release (I didn’t write most of it, though I developed the finalized structure/organization we offered to Fanpro) but I’ll ask. I do need to check my law, however, because I’m not certain how Fanpro might react. Probably the only real obstacle is that it was written on a very old word processing program (this w
The key things which FanPro tried (and failed) to address have nothing to do with tech. Instead, they wanted to reporganize the flow fo the game. Fine and dandy. But as I’ll say many times, they picked an awful, atrocious way of doing it.
The key problems with SR4 boil down to this:
- They didn’t consider the implications of anything they added.
- They genericized everything
- They cut out most of the highs and lows for characters, excpt for MCM (see below)
- They made a clear optimal path for anyone not wanting to be a Murderous Combat Machine. (and if you are a MCM, who cares what kind of character you get?)
But there were considerably better ways to do that. And in fact, I can now see many better ways to ignore deckers. Fundamentally, you don’t need them to do anything now. Despite protestations to the contrary, I see no reason you can’t spam out a hundred copies of polit decks. Sure, a decker could spoofe them - but they’d probably spoofe the decker better. And yes, the point made by Menoccio early holds. There’s no reason a corp cannot have a hundred, or a thousand, or even a hundred thousand of these things on standby. They’re cheap. It costs them almost nothing, since they don’t have to pay for the program but once. Neither do the characters.
Why? Copy protection and encryption are jokes in SR4. As a character, I can quite easily take a few days off and break the CP on all my hot programs. Pick up some cheap co pouters, and I’m done. And in fact, the game world explicitly says that almost no one pays for programs anymore because of people posting it to the net. As a decker character, I wouldn’t dare go anywhere without at least 6 computers backing me up. That would be a marginal sefety net, too.
Secondly, it makes my old character literally obsolete. Mine spent more on headware memory. Apparently, I can now store all my skillsofts there. (This point will come up again later.) And a much simpler way of doing the same thing would be to just use isolated Matrix setups. Much saner, much more secure, no ultra-impossible technology imvolved. All you do is make sure your building Matrix isn’t hooked up to the outer one except through a handful of extremely tight gates. Bam, decker has to go in, too. Once inside, he or she wants to find a secure spot or just jack in to a node near whatevere the team happens to come across.
You’re still not getting my point. I’m honestly uninterested in comparing characters. That’s not my point - instead, I have a problem with system which require characters to sacrifice character growth so they can have some money. WoD and Shadowrun 1, 2, and 3 got that: those things came out of another pool of points.
Secondly, this betrays your bias. Shadowrun has always had a problem with people who think of violence. But the real path to excelling is not to use violence, or if you must, to use overwhelming force without risk. That takes smarts, not balls aqnd gunfire. And SR makes that much harder by cutting out most of the stuff not associated with combat. SR4 makes that too easy, by encouraging dabblers. The reason I used the example of a Mystic Adept was because it makes it easy to use all those extremely cheap-force spells (at low Magic levels) that utterly destroy a game run by someone who doesn’t “get it.”
It’s things Fanpro never considered. And that’s the problem. This isn’t Shaowrun, and it’s only Shadowrun to a very small group: those who go for the smash-and-grab. They eviscerated the options for everyone else. I can’t have a bunch of contacts without paying a hideous price. I can’t be an awesome techies like I want. I can own a vast fleet of automobiles, but so can anyone else.
That would be half my point. Thank you for making it for me. They now share identical summoning rules, and the nature of spirits now makes the ones they do summon less distinct. There was no reason for this change. It was quite clear why different kinds of magicians had different spirits, and there were clear distinctions between them. No one I ever heard ever complained about it. A Beast Spirit ain’t that different from a Spirit of Man. They’re almost twins.
Moreover, the make-your-own tradition rules make it quite clear that the difference between them is almost null. Almost everyone is identical as a caster nowadays. Playing a Shaman should be wholly different from playing a Hermetic Mage, and they’re not now. Druids and Wu Jen and Aztec Priests once formed a big continuum of different styles. Now they all play pretty much the same. That bothers me. They shoudn’t, even if only because they didn’t used to; this was changed just because.
It would have fine to do this. IF (and only if) Fanpro has rebooted the line (which, it seems, is what they really wanted to do). But they didn’t, so they shouldn’t.
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Attribute boost:
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Actually, you are missing the point. Attribute Boost shoudl be used in a different manner. First, only buy one point only, but get a high magic score for other things. Your drain is negligable; in any fight you get 2-3 ability points more or less free. Then, you add whatever you want on top of that. (Cyberware not ideal, but whatever).
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Money:
Poor folks make around 2000¥ a month. They could buy a limo if they scraped by on 4000¥ for the year, not even enough to live like a squatter all year.
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You are not considering something important: they get a loan. Everyone does, poor and rich alike, and there’s no reason to think differently in Shadowrun. Why wouldn’t they do so? And I believe I said poor, not Low-lifestyle. Many people will earn certain amounts of money between Middle and Low, and they will be able to afford a lot more tech. Poor probably runs up to 3,000¥/month (I didn’t know we had the yen symbol on the board); they can easily afford a limo. And middle-class folks can afford a
Since I was originally quite excited to hear SR4, no. I am well and capable of examining my own opinions. The fact remains that I have played a much beter version of the game. It covers all the possible characters - and I do mean all of them. It lets you play almost anything you can imagine in the SR world.
I’m not impressed with kidchamelon’s dice pools because, if you wish to play that way, you can handily do the same thing without min-maxing, and in fact the system makes out-and-out min-maxing undesirable (added variety making countermeasures easier.
This system has something like ten times the number of metamagic abilities, options for all exotic species, balanced and playable within the rules (ever wanted to be a dragon?) and forms of magic wholly unknown to Shadowrun, with their own rules intergrated right into the game. It does this without hacking away at the original ruleset (which, to be honest, was a completely pointless change and added nothing.
I wanted to like SR4. It would have been pretty easy to make a good product, because SR has been playtested to hades and back over the years. Its flaws are not hard to deal with. I can rattle off a hundred ways to deal with each one, if anyone asked me. Heck, if Fanpro asks, I’ll do it for free (and much more politely, even). But I’m on a messageboard and I’m angry and I can say anything I please. Heck, we’d even give them our version of Shadowrun changed to the SR 4 system, even if we dislike it.
At one point I wanted to work for Fanpro. I knw how to write, and more importantly, I know how to think. Sad to say, but Fanpro is not on my list at all right now. I wouldn’t take a job if Fanpro offered, because their current work shows they’re not concerned with quality. They didn’t even catch basic logic errors, much less technology gaffs. But those things are importabnt, because Shadowrun is not Star Wars.
Star Wars is science Fantasy. Shadowrun is Science and Fantasy, side-by-side. The current version is a horrendous mishmash. Take the following example: the new trideo system. Used to be that Trid was a box setup. Find and dandy. The new one is open air and non-transparant. This means that in Shadowrun they’ve invented arbritrary light-deflecting forcefields. Heck, this is potentially much better than in Star Wars. With this kind of tech, you could theoretically build a planetary propulsion device! And there are many more applications. Impromptu lasers, force shields - the possibilities are endless, and should radically and completely alter the planet. People are going to be using Lightsabers in a few years, and lasers may completely replace guns. And we’re talking months, not years.
One last note: Skillwires.
Skillwires are disgustng now. Why go to college? Just get a few quick peices of cyberware and you are instantly beter at everything. It used to be that skillswires were hard to get at a good rating. Now, they cost so little that average sarari-man can easily afford them. And rationally they ought to be getting them. And with the non-existent copy-protection, they will all have the latest skillsofts. And they can easily store each and every one of them. Even if they can’t use them all at once, who cares? Ordinary people don’t need to use them all.
In short, anyone with any money at all can easily become better than any human will ever normally get at anything they want. Corps should be basically sticking these into everyone they can, since it’s actually much cheaper than bothering with training people. Don’t believe me? Go ask HR at a major corporation what training costs add up to over the years. This is immediate and more effective. Moreover, you can hire anyone. That promising hire not quite as good as you thought? Skillwires. Need some advanced electronics deisgners? Get some squatters and slap some skillwires into them. Bam. Done.
By the by, I checked. Magicians are not more visible on Astral Space unless they are actively doing something.
Oh, and one other thing: taking out the dice pols was a giant, big, fat, mistake. Reason being? Reason being that it removed all the tactical element from the game. Shadowrun (of any edition) is nt a war game. The closest it comes is deciding whether to go for cover (Runners usually shouldn’t, because they need to be aggressive and not get pinned down) and the dice pools. Do you fight conservatively? Aggressively? balance it? Keep something in reserve for a last-dicth dodge? Rolling flat dice pools isn’t nearly as fun. Sure, they sometimes got big. That was the whole point!
It’s not mine to release (since It’s not my property) but I’ll ask. I do need to check my law, however, because I’m not certain how Fanpro might react. Probably the only real obstacle is that it was written on a very old word processing program (hence it may take time to reformat).
Key points include the addition of numerous magical options, cyberware options (including things you never heard of), ways to play new races, a super-expanded character creation, many new edges and flaws, metamagic out the wazoo. The key thing to remember is that it was written by someone who knew how to GM for his own games, so it doesn’t address things he already could handle.
Hence, it doesn’t specifically address the decker issues that SR4 fixed. (Which it did; I’ll give it that much credit. I’m angry because it opened up so many other issues.) That’s handled through alternative means.
Some characters from our past with that game:
The Witch: A telekinetic/psychic with his own magic style, this character was quite powerful and immensely cunning. He survived… everything. Got into trouble when a dark spirit entered his subconscious and started taking over. Don’t worry, we fixed things. We entered his mental landscape (psychic, I told you) and started blowing up his instincts. Got that bastard right god, we did.
John Deere: A former terrorist for hire, who crashed his car and suffered mild amnesia from the brai trauma, John Deere (a la John Doe ) was the world’s best techie in the world. Briliiant and unstoppable in the Matrix, he mostly spent his time building increasingly insane devices for kicks. Almost died when the Japanese navy tried to nuke him, but he escaped and wound up with a Force 12 Weapon Focus in the bargain. (In fact, I got my screen name from him, as he was the *Smiling Bandit * from the old Shadowtech sourcebook.) Eventually retired with his Moon-spirit possessed android wife. Come to think of it, his history is much like a very weird anime cartoon.