The Shadowrun Situation

Silent Wayfarer · Post by **Silent Wayfarer** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 8:31 am

With nukes, the NAN would have lasted exactly as long as the US government felt they needed to gather up the majority of secessionist witches before scourging them from the face of the earth with nuclear fire. Plus, it conveniently upsets the status quo and replaces the nigh invincible spectre of strategic nuclear retaliation with the somewhat more confrontable conventional military.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 8:46 am

Oh, the Ghostdance, totally forgot what that was about. But then again, Spider Totem wasn't a big, mean, toxic destroyer in later publications, so that might be the reason I blanked that out. Oh well.

On another note, I recently found the "SR Online Steam Early Access" video. Apparently they screwed up so hard, they had to start over at some point, some people from their "staff" "disappeared" and all the usual problems that plague a professional venture.

Here is the vid http://youtu.be/ynWEDQEq-WE

Eplain to me how PvP is true SR fashion? Motherfucking retards, what you doing? Stahp!

Also for personal reasons I hate everyone named Jan with a passion. So go fuck yourself and die in a gutter, Jan!

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 11:08 am

The Lone Eagle Incident was before the 1st grat Ghost-Dance, if i remember correctly.
It's just generally that magic does not want nukes to work as they should in most cases. So the main reason is not "he did it!" but simply "because magic"
The Main Problem with fighting against Dragons is that you are not fighting against solitary great creatures as you would be with most other critters, but basically fighting an army of spirits and a critter that's arguably more intelligent than the smartest meta humans on the world and they also have tremendous magical and financial power. And if anything other than another dragon decides to go and try to fuck with a dragon, chances are good that the rest of the dragons will see it as an attack on them all and retaliate in kind. And then we get to the last big problem about them.
Even if, under the rules, you manage to actually do someting that will hurt/incapacitate/kill one of them, the big ones get the twist fate power, which means they can undo reality on some level and reshape it to fit their needs.
The non great dragons are easy pickings for most enemies that heft military firepower and some kind of magical force multiplier usually.
Remember the Minigun Discussion?
22D Damage is 22D Damage and that is hard to stop even with magic if it hits. If it hits, it will generally kill what it hits if that someting does not come with 7 or more points of hardened armor. Which is the one thing dragons are actually missing if i am not misremembering things here.
So yes, dragons are realtively squishy compared to other great critters.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 11:14 am

Loftwyr has Hardened Armor 8

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 12:06 pm

Ah, so i was indeed, misremembering and we will need slightly more dakka.
Either APDS or ExEx Ammo in the Minigun should do the Trick just fine here.

kzt · Post by **kzt** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 5:14 pm

Stahlseele wrote:Ah, so i was indeed, misremembering and we will need slightly more dakka.
Either APDS or ExEx Ammo in the Minigun should do the Trick just fine here.

I suspect he usually has an armor spell running when he's where people are likely to shoot at him.

Nath · Post by **Nath** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 7:32 pm

Longes wrote:What's wrong with the nukes in SR? Is there some reason authors decided to make nukes not work?

Originally, Shadowrun first edition had some nukes totally working in 2004, when Israel destroyed half of Lybian cities (without ever suggesting how the Middle East would turn out after several millions of deaths...). Then the nuke launched by North Korea at Japan in 2006, and the one launched at Russia during the Shiloh crisis in 2009, did never hit their target. Note however these two events took place before the Awakening in 2011.

The original authors probably had an idea, which was likely related to the nuke disactivation ritual in the Secrets of Power Trilogy. Whatever that was, it was lost, and the authors who came later used nukes: the tactical device brought by KE in Chicago during Burning Bright, the one used for Dunkelzahn assassination according to Michael Mulvihill notes, some French underground testing off Guiana coast mentioned in SOTA: 2064, and the late addition/retcon of a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India in 2030 in Shadows of Asia, and finally Winternight magically modified nukes in System Failure.

So first some authors decided to make nukes not work at least for a short time before the Awakening, then other authors decided to make nukes work again.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:38 pm

Dunkelzahn wasn't nuked. That was a case of rushed ritual suicide. I feel like blaming Mulvihil for all those lore inconsistencies in SRR now. Always nice to have a name to direct my anger/disappointment at.

Nath · Post by **Nath** » Fri Apr 18, 2014 7:18 pm

Per Mulvihill's own admission, they intended Dunkelzahn's ritual to involve a nuclear explosion contained by a magical barrier, but they never wrote it down in a published product.

The first actual nuclear explosion in SR history happened in Burning Bright, which was written by Tom Dowd when he was still line developer, before Mulvihill took the position. And SOTA: 2064, Shadows of Asia and System Failure were written with Rob Boyle as line developer. I'm not sure Mulvihill is the one to blame here.

Fucks · Post by **Fucks** » Fri May 02, 2014 12:41 pm

Interesting posting at dumpshock: Wakshaani talking about the "design concept" of SR5.

So, before we dig into a big ol' plate of Troll meat (ew), we first have to talk a bit about design philosophy. There are a couple of key phrases that are invoked in the design process that try to bring constant color through stuff. You have:

"Everything has a price"
"Choice is good, auto-include is bad"
and
"Honor the old material"

(I'm paraphrasing here, but it's close enough.)

The first one is simple: Things should have a cost. The bigger the benefit, the bigger the cost. This cost could be in many forms ... money, Karma, Essence, Drain, whatever, but getting a benefit for free is a bad thing. Small benefits have small costs, big benefits have big costs. At some point, people need to hit a wall where they can't, or won't, pay the price. This is a good thing. There are ots of places that this can come up; A spirit pact where the spirit wants you to, say, eat a bag of kittens, a rare prototype weapon that costs a cool million Nuyen, an awesome cyber body that costs 5.95 of your Essence, leaving you little more than a brain in a really cool jar ... are you willing to pay what it takes to get these things? Some people say yes, some say no. Finding the right balance is tricky, but needs to be done.

Which leads to #2: Choice is good. Do you want this big loud pistol with a small ammo reserve or do you want this easily-hidden small pistol that does less damage but is sneaky? Do you want a sword, which uses no ammo but requires you to be way over there, or sporting rifle with really long range? These are choices, letting people tailor what they want to do, and that's good. If you instead introduce, say, a high-powered pistol that's also easy to hide, silent, and has a big ammo reserve, well you just eliminated a choice as it's clearly better than all other options. "Well of *course* you dumpstat your Strength to a 1, then get a single cyberarm with Str and Agility 6. I mean DUH." <-- This is an auto-include, which is bad. To eliminate this, you have to make one option better (Strength is more important?), the other option worse (Cyberlimbs now cost, uh, 4 essence!) or somewhere in between. Adjusting these numbers up or down is where the art comes in, as you try to figure out where the right balance to make different builds *attractive* but not *seductive*, IE, Some concepts will go some way and others another way, rather than one build to rule them all.

And then there's #3. Don't change old stuff unless you HAVE to. If you arbitrarily go around, turning the Predator into an assault rifle and make Elves half a meter tall with meter long ears, people will be up in arms and rightly so! Changing older information is to be avoided if at all possible. If you simply have to do it, it can be done, but you'd better be prepared to bring one heck of an arguement to the guys above.

"So, Wak. Half meter tall Elves? Replacing the way we've done Elves for over twenty years? Let's hear it."
"Well, uh. Lidda was a great selling point for D&D art?"
*booted to the curb*

There were a lot of topics that people complained about for years, in SR 4 but also older editions, and people upstairs noticed. Stick-n-Shock ruling everything was a known problem that had to get fixed. Non-augmented adepts simply falling so far behind the augmented adept curve needed to be handled. There were other issues, major and minor, that were handled during the cleanup and the move from 4th to 5th. Lots of subsystems got tried out, tweaked, changed, tossed out, and new ones moved into their place. Some rule debates got hot, with some passion being thornw around as cases were made for X and Y. EVentually, higher levels made calls as they are supposed to do, everyone got on the same page, and while there was some under-breath grumbling about a thing or two, everybody lined up behind the official word and moved ahead with that. These are essential things and, luckily, the Shadowrun team is filled with professionals who understand that you don't take your ball and go home if you lose a battle. Yeah, you'll still find a grumble or two, but it's mild and no one is talking revolution or whatever.

So, that brings us to Trolls.

Trolls are a defining element of Shadowrun's history. They're big and beefy and COOL, you have the horn thing, the general massiveness, the tusks... they're just cool. Everybody loves 'em. For two editions, they were minor players at best, due to how expensive it was to be a Troll and how minor the benefits were (High Strength in an edition where Strength was a dumpstat = bad investment) ... this changed in 3rd edition, where the previous 1-2 edition focus on humanity was changed, Metatypes made easier to take in chargen, and sample archetypes completely flipped from around a 15-3 human majority to a 14-2 meta-majority. 4th edition kept this going, again with a majority-meta bit of character samples and cheap metaforms.

One thing that came out of 4th was the "Anorexic Ork/Beanpole Troll" build, where people would take the meta type for cheap, keep the minimum attributes they gave (Body and Strength), then boost everything else. This was efficient as it cost roughly double to get the Body and Strength normally as it did to just take "Ork" and you got metavision on top of that. The stereotypical "Big dumb Troll" was replaced by a weedy Troll magician. Was this intentional or was it just efficiency fallout?

So, when it came to Trolls, a few things stood out. One is that in the earlier methods of chargen, being a Troll was crazy costly. Attributes were being rebalanced to make some more alluring than before, Strength in particular was getting upgraded, Charisma was made more important especially when cheap tech ways of boosting it were taken out, and getting the cost for Trolls right was a real bear.

Trolls, and even moreso Orks, have an extra layer in them which depends on the game. In some groups, "Walking while tusked" is enough to reason to be pulled aside, frisked, and made to produce a valid SIN pretty much anywhere on the street, especially in high-class areas. In otehr games, nobody gives a hoot and you can find Troll bankers in suits, reading paperwork over teensy glasses while in the middle of a Shiawase building. If you made Trolls cheaper due to racism, the other games would see a big break in Trollcost. If you didn't factor it in, then the games where "Spread 'em" was the norm would grumble about having paid so much for a Metatype then get harassed *constantly* ... it might not be worth it.

You also had to factor in the new design concepts... should the big dumb Troll be encouraged and players rewarded for going that way, or should the new model Troll be embraced and the old cast aside? Was "Troll" a character build in and of itself, or did you need to be able to say "Troll Samurai" or "Troll Mage" with barely a blip? Troll bonuses were *so* large that they deformed chargen. Should Trolls be trimmed, their bonuses made smaller, so as to be less-deforming? If you do that, do you further adjust Orks and Dwarves down, to make room for the new smaller Troll mods? How do these attribute reductions line up with older books and established canon? If we take half a meter of height off of Trolls, take away muscle mass, and make them cheaper, will the Shadowrun fanbase be willing to accept them?

Lots of decisions to make and the echo of it could cover everything. If you want to play around with (non-official) numbers yourself, here on Dumpshock there's a post about someone's home-brewed Karmagen system, where they go through and take a stab at the assorted costs of each Metatype. Just taking a Troll in that system eats up about a qurter of your karma. Is that good? Bad? Should the cost be lower? Higher? Someone in a later post will probably link to that thread, and you can discus the pros and cons here. You can also talk about the official rules and see how moving Troll priority around could make a dent, or about changing Troll stat mods, or, well, whatever really. It's Dumpshock. Things wander. smile.gif

Getting the balance just right isn't easy, to say the least. There's a thread or two on here about "Troll combat monsters" and how they can be made into giant damage-soaking machines. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it, perhaps, a good thing that's been taken too far, or a sign of when a GM has to step in and swat a player's hand and go, "No! Try to match up with your team members." Should the game put more faith in players and GMs to do police themselves or should teh game try to do some of that work for the players, since newer GMs might not be willing, or able, to do it in a way veterans can?

Tons of variables.

My participation will be spotty for a bit, since I have a day job to deal with, but I'll be here where I can and I'll talk about what I can, but, again, there are NDA issues here and the simple fact that I'm a freelancer, not a design team member, means that there's plenty of stuff I don't know. I might have had a suggestion here or there, but it was never my rule to write and never my call to make; that's a burden of responsibility way over my pay grade. smile.gif Still, this is a topic that's come up quite a few times, so, I figured we should go ahead, get one big thread on it, and chew the fat for a while. I hope that everything can be kept civil and that criticism, which will flow, could be constructive where possible. I always suggest that if you want to point out a problem, you should try and make a stab at presenting a correction as well, but that's different than just grappling with an issue and discussing it. It should also be noted that a discussion, where a problem is disected, pulled apart, looked at from several angles, and examined, is different than a debate, where one person tries to move opinion to their own.

I think that's all the disclaimers that I have for now. Everybody put on your thinking caps. It's time to talk Trolls.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri May 02, 2014 3:11 pm

Thank you for that Fucks. That's a nice little window into the mind of someone who could produce something that is as amazingly bad as SR5. I note that "make a game that isn't fucking terrible" is not one of their design constraints, so that's consistent.

We're talking about someone who was directly aware that Strength was a joke stat that didn't do dick and was simultaneously worried that the Troll stat bonuses were so large that they deformed the game. Did it not occur to those assholes to even wonder whether perhaps getting a very large bonus to a number that doesn't matter still doesn't matter? Fuck.

-Username17

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Fri May 02, 2014 7:10 pm

Wait, there was a concept? There was DESIGN?

Ed · Post by Ed » Fri May 02, 2014 8:37 pm

Rawbeard wrote:Wait, there was a concept?

"Shoulderpads upon shoulderpads."

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri May 02, 2014 11:02 pm

No, that's WH40K

And at least Wak came to dumpshock to try and talk to us around the NDA. As much as he could anyway
That's more than most of the current writers can say of themselves.

Ed · Post by Ed » Sat May 03, 2014 5:21 am

WH40K has pauldrons. Spiked pauldrons.

Shadowrun has shoulderpads and mohawks.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat May 03, 2014 10:23 am

ok, my mistake, i concede the point

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat May 03, 2014 11:24 am

The EMPRAH is disappoint, son.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue May 06, 2014 4:26 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Thank you for that Fucks. That's a nice little window into the mind of someone who could produce something that is as amazingly bad as SR5. I note that "make a game that isn't fucking terrible" is not one of their design constraints, so that's consistent.

We're talking about someone who was directly aware that Strength was a joke stat that didn't do dick and was simultaneously worried that the Troll stat bonuses were so large that they deformed the game. Did it not occur to those assholes to even wonder whether perhaps getting a very large bonus to a number that doesn't matter still doesn't matter? Fuck.

-Username17

You know, Frank, I very much doubt that there was monolithic unilateral agreement on all the terrible fucking ideas. There were probably people screaming against them on the basis of their awfulness, but those people were shouted down by the idiocy of the vocal majority/management.

I mean there was (IIRC) bad shit in Shadowrun books you were a part of/involved with (Street Magic and Unwired, IIRC?). When push comes to shove, were you able to do fuckall to stop it, no matter how loud you yelled?

There were like..."a milly"... people involved in designing SR5 to one degree or another, like a ridiculous amount. I doubt very much they all agreed on all the terrible ideas that make the game up. It's very likely at least some of them protested against at least some of the shit that went into the shit smoothie, and were soundly ignored. See also: second quote in my sig.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 06, 2014 5:18 pm

I didn't actually work on Unwired. I gave Peter Taylor a list of problems with the Matrix rules and told him point blank that they could not be solved without contradicting portions of the chapter. Aaron on the other hand, told him that he could totally make everything perfect without actually errataing anything, so Peter went with Aaron instead of me.

And... I was right and Aaron was wrong. And neither Aaron not Peter have ever apologized to me.

-Username17

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Tue May 13, 2014 3:02 am

So, I recently acquired a Shadowrun 2nd edition book, and I haven't gotten very far into it, but how is a dragon supposed to attack a passenger jet for several minutes? Can't it only run 30 meters per round (10 m/s)? Does its firebreath have a 10 kilometer range?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue May 13, 2014 6:12 am

Foxwarrior wrote:So, I recently acquired a Shadowrun 2nd edition book, and I haven't gotten very far into it, but how is a dragon supposed to attack a passenger jet for several minutes? Can't it only run 30 meters per round (10 m/s)? Does its firebreath have a 10 kilometer range?

Its spells have a range of line of sight. A better question is how a dragon managed to not instantly bring down the plane, considering that it can blow up the engines from the horizon. It also has a flight multiplier and can benefit from spirit movement, so it's not necessarily outflown by the plane, but it honestly doesn't matter if it is, considering the LOS range on the only attacks it has that matter.

The whole Flight 329 thing was kind of weird. One of the original authors must have thought the imagery was really cool, because a lot of ink is spent on it. But honestly it's hard to see how the event would matter much one way or the other. That plotline never went anywhere, and it's not hard to understand why - there's nothing there to build a plot off of.

Of course, considering what has recently come to light about how the media can't shut up about missing aircraft, I guess the fact that Flight 329 got surprisingly heavy coverage in the history section despite being essentially a criminal act in the past with few repercussions for the future is prescient. The media apparently would give such an event way more coverage than it deserves. The authors of 1989 are, sadly, vindicated in 2014.

-Username17

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Tue May 13, 2014 8:46 am

IIRC one of the passenger was an immortal elf who participated in the "dragon hunt" (killing dragons when the mana was low). He was able to resist for a few minutes before getting overpowered by the dragon.

I don't remember where this is explained, though.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue May 13, 2014 10:05 am

Ed wrote:WH40K has pauldrons. Spiked pauldrons.

Shadowrun has shoulderpads and mohawks.

Tyranids wear shoulderpads on their shoulders, and then stack shoulderpads upon shoulderpads on their heads.

Designed by Jes Goodwin

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Tue May 13, 2014 10:33 am

Dear Lord of Terra, they even got Shoulderpads on their guns...

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue May 13, 2014 1:22 pm

why do they have hands? x.x