The Gaming Den

Question: Is the version of the game that got dumped online for free, ages ago when they thought they were going out of business, significantly different to the game now? What are you talking about here? The game is licensed under Creative Commons and you can literally download the latest version f...

Silva, there is no possible way you can be that disingenuous accidentally.

Go away troll.

To add insult to injury, despite the fact that enabling wireless is supposed to be the new normal, both the guards and the named NPC opposition in the first SR5 Mission are explicitly stated to patrol with their wireless turned OFF.

It's a rather blatant case of "do as I say, not as I do."

Power lifters are not trim, ripped guys. However they are enormously strong. That's actually only true for a certain segment of powerlifting. The video is of Andy Bolton, who weighs 160 kg and competes in the IPF in the 120 kg and over weight class. And it's true that those fellows don't tend to fo...

Yes. It's frustratingly bad. Offhand, I'd guess that about 90% of the content (or at least the weaponry), is material from SR2, SR3, and SR4 with damage codes updated to SR5. Seriously...a significant percentage of the guns made their first appearance in Fields of Fire back in 1994. I just find it h...

9M Damage is what the Ares Predator does. 9 is the TN you need to roll and M is Medium Damage, meaning you need to roll 4 hits with TN 9 to not take any damage at all. Armor directly substracts from the 9, so with the Ares Predator Heavy Pistol, if you wear 5 points of ballistic Armor, your TN goes...

....so if you had a power armored soldier who 'wears' his armor rather than 'riding' in a vehicle so he gets the advantageous armor rules to use... you have a battlefield ruled by mecha! That seems to be where we're heading. Because wearing MilSpec armor means you get to use the rules for being a d...

It's very situational. If Joe Security Guard shoots his twin with a gun, he can reasonably expect to do base damage minus 1 assuming this conflict takes place at point blank range, in good light, and everyone is naked. Most guns do somewhere between 8 and 12 damage, and Joe Security Guard will have ...

Actually, one last addendum before bed. I was assuming that vehicle armor uses the hardened armor rules, because that would seemingly make sense. Now that I've gone looking for proof of that, I can't find it. Which could be because vehicle armor is not hardened, or because it's in a sidebar in the s...

Wait so they still have that whole thing where armor suddenly switches from immune to damage 1:1 to resisting damage 1:3 and thus becomes massively, massively worse as soon as you get a single +1 to DV? Not exactly. I haven't wargamed out all the possibilities, but it seems to me that instead of ha...

There's some additional craziness because one of the changes between 4th and 5th was they incorporated Frank's house rule for hardened armor: half you're armor counts as automatic successes. You might think at first blush this is a good thing. Not really. Where this gets crazy is a lot of the high-e...

When it comes to NPC mages; when they're described as a Grade 2 Initiate, what is their implied Magic score? Do NPCs commonly work like PCs and buy their Magic to maximum before initiating? This is in the context of either (or both) setting or 4E w/EotM house-rules. There's really not a definitive ...

As an alternative to chasing endless expansions, buying another core set also opens up a lot of additional deckbuilding options and makes the game quite a bit more re-playable. With only one core set, you tend to see a lot of the same decks over and over again. You could always just head straight to...

Two things: I was assuming that your use of anti- was meant in the context of "works against", because it appeared that you were intelligent enough to know that "lacks the quality of" is shown by "non-" and "doesn't like, works against" is shown by "anti-...

To be fair Jester, there was an archetype for the people who didn't have magic or cyberware and that was the Detective one. Now no one I knew ever played one. Hey, I'm happy to grant that. I'll even go beyond that and point out that there were a number of sample characters who were "neithers&q...

Never said he was at the core of Shadowrun . Actually said, the choice between man, magic or machine was at the core of Shadowrun . Oh really? The choice to embrace magic (if you have the potential) or technology, or neither is at the core of Shadowrun character creation and Shadowrun playing itsel...

Hilarity. Ah yes. Because making changes to one archetype destroys the setting when Frank does it, but making changes to all the archetypes...and inventing some that haven't existed for 25 years...totally preserves the setting when you do it. That makes sense. The part where you claim that being a ...

You might not like Lokathor constantly comparing your material to EOTM, but his initial question has still never been addressed: how does this work? Because until there's some sort of plausible ingame explanation for that, then all the handwaving around technology actually makes it more magic than m...

1st and 2nd edition were especially strong with respect to the interior black and white art. There were a few bizarre ones, but overall that was a really great look. Now, the color pieces were far more hit and miss. Yes, the cover for 1st and 2nd edition was ridiculously good, but remember the arche...

It isn't. The cheapest ipad deck on the market is mere 3R availability. There are no rules for upgrading decks. It's particularly galling when you consider the fact that the fiction they released to promote SR5 seemed to describe the decker's cyberdeck as a series of daisy-chained commlinks that he...

Problems I see with SR5: 1. Matrix rules are still bad. 2. Wireless bonuses don't make Matrix rules any better. 3. Technomancers are nerfed into oblivion. I don't see any way to use Puppeteer complex form, for example. 4. Mystic Adepts are Magicians+ or Adepts+, depending on how you build them. Eve...

I wasn't kidding or exaggerating when I said that despite the production values appearing to be high (in terms of aesthetics, art, etc.), this is a very frustrating book to use precisely because the usability is so low. To illustrate the point, I originally got the PDF simply because at the time it ...

Trollerskates are somewhat less effective in SR5 (since trolls suffer from a sprint multiplier penalty) than they were in SR4 (where trolls actually benefited from a walk/run rate bonus).

I have exactly zero interest in SR5 but has anyone played or attempted a session with the new rule set? Anyone planning to give it a review? There's a decent summary of the changes between SR4 and SR5 in this Dumpshock thread: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=39872 If you want a quic...

OK, let's step away from the encryption/decryption nonsense for a bit . . How do we get the Vehicle Rigger to be more usefull/integrated? The Drone Rigger is easy, but if you want to play Michael Knight or Jesse Mach, you are boned something fierce . . To a certain extent, that's just the Shadowrun...