The Shadowrun Situation

[sabs]

This totally doesn't work for Mirrored Sunglasses play where you're plotting out what to bring, and what not to bring. Lets say you want some ex-ex rounds, and some stun rounds, and then regular rounds for when you fucked up and there's nothing left but to pour ammo at the other guys and get out.

The fact that you only have 3 clips of stick and shock only you is potentially important if you did your planning badly. Also, ammo,what ever. We abstract ammo all the time. Now explain to me how your system takes into account what kind of cyber I want to get implanted. Or wether to get the rating 2 or rating 3 gas vent for my super tricked out machine gun.

[silva]

Omegon, AW economy system dont look so different from the ones suggested by TheFlatline above (Spycraft and Dark Heresy). So the concept is far from being exclusive to AW.

[virgil]

First, AW approach includes the fact ammo will disappear or refill based on the DM's ad-hoc interpretation of your seduction roll.

Second, if gear isn't on the scale of beans, then you don't have a Viper; you have a gun. You don't get gel-rounds, smart laser sights, suppressors, or extended magazine; you get either a Saturday night special or a Lawgiver. Nothing in-between and no variance in your weapon quality; which is totally a different game that requires more along the lines of a new system/engine with the Shadowrun logo stamped on the side.

[silva]

This totally doesn't work for Mirrored Sunglasses play where you're plotting out what to bring, and what not to bring. Lets say you want some ex-ex rounds, and some stun rounds, and then regular rounds for when you fucked up and there's nothing left but to pour ammo at the other guys and get out.

The fact that you only have 3 clips of stick and shock only you is potentially important if you did your planning badly. Also, ammo,what ever. We abstract ammo all the time. Now explain to me how your system takes into account what kind of cyber I want to get implanted. Or wether to get the rating 2 or rating 3 gas vent for my super tricked out machine gun.

If you want this degree of granularity, the "abstract economics" may not give you the kick you expect.

In my Shadowrun table, I would abstract it all anyway, though:

Player: "I want to bring 3 types of different ammo type, that is Ex-Ex, flechette, and.."

GM: "Ok, whatever, no need to specify. Since youre a Sammy/Merc, we assume you carry different ammo types all the time, ok ?"

Now, if you want something unnatural to your role/arquetype or lifestyle ("Im a Decker and want to bring a sniper rifle plus 4 different ammo types with me!"), then just pay, say, 2 Credits and thats ok too.

In the end its all a matter of what each group wants out of their game. Its a taste thing, like everything else.

[silva]

First, AW approach includes the fact ammo will disappear or refill based on the DM's ad-hoc interpretation of your seduction roll.

Yup. And there is no problem with that if the group is on board with the concept. (there is an exception to this rule: if your gun has the +Automatic tag and you use it in this way, you must reload it before using it again).

Second, if gear isn't on the scale of beans, then you don't have a Viper; you have a gun. You don't get gel-rounds, smart laser sights, suppressors, or extended magazine; you get either a Saturday night special or a Lawgiver. Nothing in-between and no variance in your weapon quality; which is totally a different game that requires more along the lines of a new system/engine with the Shadowrun logo stamped on the side.

Yup. With lower granularity, you end up with all light pistols being equal; all heavy pistols being equal, all SMGs being equal, etc. and each character stylishly changing the name of theirs ("My SMG is a Arasaka AS-13, how about yours ?").


EDIT: in practice though, I dont think my group ever gave much importance to individual weapon stats. "I want a shotgun" or "I need a concealable pistol" always seemed enough for them.

[NineInchNall]

Yup. With lower granularity, you end up with all light pistols being equal; all heavy pistols being equal, all SMGs being equal, etc. and each character stylishly changing the name of theirs ("My SMG is a Arasaka AS-13, how about yours ?").

"My gun does as much damage and with as much accuracy as your top of the line, smart-link enabled, long chambered, 1/12 twist, fluted barrel Ariake Heavy Industries prototype. Did I mention my gun is made entirely of marshmallows and fresh semen?"



I mean, that's fine if you want to play Semenrun: The Marshmallowing, but it sucks if you want to play Shadowrun.

[silva]

"My gun does as much damage and with as much accuracy as your top of the line, smart-link enabled, long chambered, 1/12 twist, fluted barrel Ariake Heavy Industries prototype. Did I mention my gun is made entirely of marshmallows and fresh semen?"

Not necessarily. Its entirely possible to add accessories to an abstract economic system like AW. In fact, it already does it - look at the Battlebabe sheet..

So, you could end up with acessories giving different tags like +Far range, +Night vision, +Armor piercing, etc. The difference is that this kind of system will have less options (which is different from doesnt having ANY options/differentiating at all) for the sake of simplicity.

Here, an example pistol:

Ares Viper Slivergun (2-harm, close, reload)
> automatic (+area)
> built-in silencer (-loud)
> flechette ammo (+flechette)

Voila!

[Blade]

There are some cases of bad design in Shadowrun equipment. For example, nobody will ever take a medkit with a rating less than 6, because the cost difference is not significant while the bonus is.

But the whole concept of having very detailed options, down to the individual nuyen isn't necessarily a sign of a bad design. It's a sign of a particular focus on an aspect.

In game design, there's an important concept: the aspects where your rules have a lot of granularity/focus will be aspects that are important in the game. If your game has a very detailed wound system, then your game will revolve a lot around wounds and their consequences.

The focus on gear and gear customization in Shadowrun isn't unwarranted. Shadowrun is cyberpunk, and in cyberpunk gear matters. Even more so in post-cyberpunk where your gear define yourself as much if not more than your personality.

But there can be players who don't really care about it and don't want to insist too much on it. There are cyberpunk books where the gear, while important, is not very detailed.

But silva is right about something: things that some Shadowrun players consider as great features are considered as problems by others and vice-versa. In more than 20 years, Shadowrun has has many players and many writers. It also underwent the shift of the cyberpunk paradigm into post-cyberpunk, with some parts of that shift impacting the game while other parts missed it completely.

You now have people who play Shadowrun as a 80s cyberpunk game, others who play it like GiTS+magic, others who play it as a technothriller set in our world with magic and cyber, others who play it as Cthulhu 2070, others who play it as "cyber superheroes save the world" and so on.

Many games offer different game type, and it's not wrong per se that Shadowrun has so many ways to be played. The problem is that technothriller Shadowrun doesn't explore the same themes GITS Shadowrun does, for the players who play 80s cyberpunk SR, cyberware will eat your soul, while for other players it will just be a tool.

That's how you end up with many "optional rules" and ambiguous rules that are up to the GM. That's how you end up with a bland world that's not going far enough in the direction you want. That's how you end up with writers who write on the same product but for a different game. That's how you get tables where violent gangs kill innocent people in Downtown Seattle ever week without getting in trouble and tables where characters will be in deep trouble because they brought a heavy pistol in that same neighborhood.

That's why, if I were to design a new edition of Shadowrun, I'd split the game into three lines: Shadowrun 2035 (technothriller), Shadowrun 2050 (80s cyberpunk) and Shadowrun 2070 (post-cyberpunk). All would share the same basic rules, but each would have their own additional rules and their own atmosphere.

[silva]

Thats an awesome idea, Blade.

[kzt]

Second, if gear isn't on the scale of beans, then you don't have a Viper; you have a gun. You don't get gel-rounds, smart laser sights, suppressors, or extended magazine; you get either a Saturday night special or a Lawgiver. Nothing in-between and no variance in your weapon quality; which is totally a different game that requires more along the lines of a new system/engine with the Shadowrun logo stamped on the side.

The current SR approach is that "We publish dozens of guns, of which all but three are totally worthless and nobody with a clue will ever use because they suck compared to those three."

I can waste time talking shit in real life about combat tuperware or the antics of worshipers of saint John Browning, but in a game that has the kind of supposedly abstract combat system there really isn't any reason for the kind of idiocy that SR does with guns.

[vagrant]

But they're so pretty!

[Longes]

It turns out SR5 still failed to solve Script Kiddie problem.

Let's say I want to be combat adept + hacker.
I buy best cyberdeck on the market - 7/6/5/4. I buy Agent 3. Now I have 8 hacking dice without investing a single point into actual hacking and/or logic. Either I make a good command lists for my agent ("Hack guns that are shooting at me", "Hack equipment of people I've just designated", "Hack people who try to hack my equipment") and switch command lists as needed, or I just micromanage the agent. After the first mission I buy Agent 6 for 12k, and have 14 hacking dice without investing a single point into actual hacking. Meanwhile, all my carma goes into being a badass adept. Script kiddies ahoy!

[Username17]

It turns out SR5 still failed to solve Script Kiddie problem.

Let's say I want to be combat adept + hacker.
I buy best cyberdeck on the market - 7/6/5/4. I buy Agent 3. Now I have 8 hacking dice without investing a single point into actual hacking and/or logic. Either I make a good command lists for my agent ("Hack guns that are shooting at me", "Hack equipment of people I've just designated", "Hack people who try to hack my equipment") and switch command lists as needed, or I just micromanage the agent. After the first mission I buy Agent 6 for 12k, and have 14 hacking dice without investing a single point into actual hacking. Meanwhile, all my carma goes into being a badass adept. Script kiddies ahoy!

Well, Agents are whole can of worms, because the writing and editing are so terrible it's hard to know what they mean. Can you actually parse this sentence:

Agents use the Matrix attributes of the device they run on, and their rating (up to 6) for attributes.

Does that mean you add the matrix attributes and the rating together? Does that mean they use their rating in place of mortal human attributes that would otherwise be called for? No one fucking knows, because that sentence doesn't make any sense.

Note that they also didn't stop Agent Smith, as long as you use Hackastacks. The only limit on the number of Agents you can field is that you can't run more than one of the same program type per deck. Since there's no requirement for you to do anything at all to have your Agent do his thing as well or better than a real character, you can fill your backpack with cheap decks and have all of them run an Agent and they each get their own persona and can act independently of you. And as near as I can tell, they can still all be slaved to a single Cyberdeck and get the benefits of the master's higher stats (assuming they use the cyberdeck's stats at all, depending on your reading of Agents they may be able to full replace all of them with their rating).

Although the biggest confusion is that Agents use up a Program Slot on your cyberdeck. The number of program slots cyberdecks have is not defined anywhere in the book. The number of program slots a drone has for autosofts and shit is defined: it's half the device rating, which in turn is equal to its pilot rating (why couldn't they just say it was half the pilot rating instead of sending you on a scavenger hunt?). And since literally every single Drone in the book has a Pilot rating of 3 or 4, the actual rule is that a Drone can run two autosofts. Commlinks apparently can't run any programs, although sometimes it's implied that they actually can, and Cyberdecks have some undisclosed number of program slots which you can load programs into or swap new programs for old programs in slots you had already used or whatever.

Basically, the matrix rules are completely incoherent. To the extent that they can be parsed at all, they are broken beyond possibility of salvage. I don't think it's actually possible to write a worse set of matrix rules. Even if it was just pictures of Goatse for thirty pages, that would still be better, because people would be offended and realize that they had to magical teaparty the whole thing right away instead of trying to chew their way through page after page of dense jargon only to finally realize at the end that the entire act of attempting to wrap their minds around it was pointless because it's all unworkable, contradictory, unsalvageable shit.

-Username17

[unnamednpc]

I don't think it's actually possible to write a worse set of matrix rules.

You are aware that there is bound to be this edition's equivalent of 'Unwired' some point down the line?

[Longes]

Does that mean you add the matrix attributes and the rating together? Does that mean they use their rating in place of mortal human attributes that would otherwise be called for? No one fucking knows, because that sentence doesn't make any sense.

Full qoutation:
[quote="SR5, p.246]Agents use the Matrix attributes of the device they run on, and their rating (up to 6) for attributes. Agents also have the Computer, Hacking, and Cybercombat skills at a rating equal to their own.[/quote]
They use cyberdeck's Matrix attributes and their Rating+Rating for Attribute+Skill tests.
EDIT: Clarification. Matrix attributes are used as limits on hacking tests, and for some other things (Attack for attack DV, Firewall for Defense Tests, Data processing for Initiative, etc.)

you can fill your backpack with cheap decks

Well, cheapest cyberdeck is 50k, so this is kind of limited.

The number of program slots cyberdecks have is not defined anywhere in the book

It is actually. P.227, in the table with cyberdeck stats. Cyberdecks run number of programs equal to their Device Rating.

[Username17]

It is actually. P.227, in the table with cyberdeck stats. Cyberdecks run number of programs equal to their Device Rating.

That is a possible interpretation of that table. It actually just says "Programs." It doesn't say "Program Slots" or "Maximum Programs" it just says "Programs." And that's just a chart heading. There is no explanation of that part of the chart anywhere in the book. But since the rules also say that cyberdecks come with programs, and that number is also not explicitly defined anywhere, that it could just as easily mean the number of programs that come when you purchase it. Basically, the word "Program" is used dozens of times in that book for all kinds of different things, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that that particular one is specifically referring to the maximum slots. It's just seriously the word "Programs" followed by some numbers on the chart.

Well, cheapest cyberdeck is 50k, so this is kind of limited.

Yeah, but the cheapest Drone is only 1000 nuyen. And every drone has two slots for autosofts or cyberprograms (Autosofts, p. 269, though requiring you to then read Pilot Programs, p. 269 and then the Drone list on p. 465 to get that number). And there's basically no drawback to loading cyberprograms onto drones, because as per p. 267, if you actually loaded them with any Autosofts they'd lose access to your shared Autosofts off your RCC, which is always a number that is at least 2 if you aren't using scratch built junk, and is usually higher than that.

As a Script Kiddy, you can add as many Agent Smiths as you want for 1k each.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Reminds me of the "buy a Rating 6 emotitoy for 600 nuyen, get over 3'000 nuyen (rating 6 empathy program and sensors to use it) out of it" failure.

[Ice9]

I felt like the "expensive cyberdeck" thing would come back to bite them in the ass, and here we are. When 90% of the setting requires ubiquitous and large amounts of computing power stuck in every place you can think of, trying to make "having a computer" the points bottleneck of being a hacker is just not going to cut it.

It's not like it would even be hard to come up with something better - brain-to-matrix interfaces could legitimately be called out as expensive. Or skills could be required in a larger amount and be the determining factor (my preference, as the "street hacker with a kludged together deck" archetype should be supported, IMO).

[Heisenberg]

Silva please keep your acockalypse world the fuck out of my shadowrun.

That's why, if I were to design a new edition of Shadowrun, I'd split the game into three lines: Shadowrun 2035 (technothriller), Shadowrun 2050 (80s cyberpunk) and Shadowrun 2070 (post-cyberpunk). All would share the same basic rules, but each would have their own additional rules and their own atmosphere.

Neat idea. I'm actually planning on something more than superficially similar with Shadowrun: Quarantined History, which will follow my SRPC project with rules for playing Shadowrun in every "era" of Shadowrun history, from the crash of 2029 to the 2070s and beyond. (Shadowrun: 2050 failed at this concept so hard it makes me want to vomit, and that was before I even looked at the Matrix rules.)

[Aryxbez]

I know 5th edition Shadowrun Suuuuuucks, and my current group owns buttload of 4th edition material, but not sure how asking em to switch would go.

Anyway, what buffs do you think could be houseruled to make Street Samurai's more viable in 5th edition Shadowrun? I know the GM banned multiple Grenades from firing more than one stacking (killing my Boss-slayer niche), but allowed my melee weapon to have 6 charges +10S damage on top of the melee damage I do. So I'm wondering what buffs ye think I could convince a GM to allow?

So far, I'm thinking maybe allow other Ware to stack(like the Suprathyroid Gland, or Adrenaline Pump).

[Username17]

The thing is that in 5th edition, getting a single attack big enough to drop a target in one hit is trivial. I really don't see how a Street Samurai can have a niche when a mage can turn invisible and carry a big gun.

-Username17

[Aryxbez]

I really don't see how a Street Samurai can have a niche when a mage can turn invisible and carry a big gun.

True enough I suppose, though couldn't the same be said of Sam's in 4th edition? I know they were replaced by Riggers, since they can have Drones that give Street Sam firepower Kaio Ken-style. Nevermind Mages who Hulked out on Spirits.

It seems like these writers love hating on the Street Sam, but increasingly fetishize Magic. I get the latter for easy storytelling (though idiotic), but why the former, and decide to have a clearly inferior option in the book?

I'm gandering a guess the problems with Street Sams like D&D, are too deep to be really helped at all, houserules or not?

[Heisenberg]

I know 5th edition Shadowrun Suuuuuucks, and my current group owns buttload of 4th edition material, but not sure how asking em to switch would go.

Anyway, what buffs do you think could be houseruled to make Street Samurai's more viable in 5th edition Shadowrun? I know the GM banned multiple Grenades from firing more than one stacking (killing my Boss-slayer niche), but allowed my melee weapon to have 6 charges +10S damage on top of the melee damage I do. So I'm wondering what buffs ye think I could convince a GM to allow?

So far, I'm thinking maybe allow other Ware to stack(like the Suprathyroid Gland, or Adrenaline Pump).

For the love of gob, and all that is holby, don't play SR5.

[TheFlatline]

It seems like these writers love hating on the Street Sam, but increasingly fetishize Magic. I get the latter for easy storytelling (though idiotic), but why the former, and decide to have a clearly inferior option in the book?

Because there isn't a flat out futuristic fantasy setting, and Shadowrun sort of straddles that line, and brown elf nipples.

Actually you're probably right at this point, it's easier to write metaplot for dragon cock than it is to try to figure out what a dozen ultra-powerful AAA megacorps would do to maintain capitalist supremacy over each other.

It also may be that the zeitgeist for megacorps and high technology has passed. We didn't get Tessier-Ashpool, we got Facebook. Which in it's own way can be kind of cyberpunk-ish but it takes some patience to work those themes into the setting.

[Username17]

Street Samurai have the problem that the things they do look like power and options even when they are not. Also, they come in incremental chunks so it seems like Samurai are getting powerups when they objectively aren't.

Consider a Street Samurai deciding that he wants to kill people with a rifle. A noble and effective thing to do. So the Samurai needs to get a rifle, he needs to get a smartlink, he needs some mods for his rifle, he needs a skill in longarms, and so on and so forth. That's a lot of "upgrades" but at the end of the day all it actually adds up to is the ability to spend your turn shooting people. Now imagine for the moment that instead we had a Mage deciding that he wants to kill people with a manabolt. That requires him to learn the spell "manabolt." That's it. All his skills and equipment and power investment carries over to the new spell automatically. He doesn't need to get five different upgrades to kill people with a manabolt, he just learns manabolt and away he goes.

So designers are essentially constantly shitting on the Samurai without even noticing that they are doing it. They say "What are you complaining about? We gave you five upgrades and the Mage only got three." But any one of the upgrades the Mage got was adding as much capability as all five of the Samurai's, so really the Samurai got left in the dust and the designers bitched about how they were getting too much stuff!

How many skills are that let a Street Samurai "use a weapon?" And how many skills are there named "Gunnery" or "Spellcasting?" That is the thing that fucks Street Samurai. A Rigger can learn one skill and rig any kind of gun. A Mage can learn one skill and cast any kind of spell. A Street Samurai is expected to buy a separate skill to hit people with a stick and to hit people with a pointy stick. Automatics, Pistols, Longarms, Heavy Weapons, and Throwing are not as good combined as Gunnery is by itself. People keep thinking that writing up more Street Samurai skills and equipment makes Samurai stronger, but it actually makes them weaker. It increases the about of build points they have to invest to get their shit done.

-Username17