The Shadowrun Situation

[Whipstitch]

The problem isn't conceptual or thematic. We have plenty of media where standard issue drones are no match for elite mercenaries from the future. You really can fix a lot of this just by letting Samurai threaten to harm more people a round instead of insisting that all their extra dice is only good for pointless overkill. For example, Samurai were in a healthier place in SR4 because drones often were stuck using Complex Action firing modes and fully automatic weapons in order to have a chance of hitting whereas a Samurai was often bad ass enough that he could consistently hit people with an unmodified Simple Action. These days the once per pass bs means you may as well default to complex actions.

[Username17]

I never played Shadowrun, but I would've expected the street samurai to have super acuraccy or something, whereas the mass-produced bots have shit aim.

So the street samurai having less dakka would matter less when each of his bullets finds a chink on the enemy armor while the drones have trouble hitting a moving target smaller than a house.

That and/or the street samurai has a legacy machine gun that's super customized and pimped and simply can't be mass produced to put in bots.

There's no way for a Street Samurai to get enough accuracy boosts to have total per-round firepower that equals what a Rigger drone squad can put out, even if the Rigger has only a modest investment in shooting things. That's in any edition of Shadowrun, by the way. Shadowrun is a game with multiple attacker penalties to the target's defense roll for fuck's sake. The way the game mechanical abstraction happens to break things down, offensive output is heavily favored to the characters who have means of being in more than one place at once.

In SR4, the Street Samurai can justify their existence somewhat by going even firster and being much better at dodging bullets. This in turn means that the Street Samurai can win many fights with essentially no attrition (bullets are very expensive in this game, but you know what I mean) that the Drone pilot might lose some of their killer robots to. But the Drone Pilot would still dominate in total offensive output per round just like they do in every edition.

In SR5, there's a one attack per turn rule, while it still normally takes precisely two hits to drop most targets. So the Street Samurai "going first" is relatively meaningless. Probably he won't actually drop an enemy with the first action. Secondly, reductions in expected starting stats and cyberware mean that the edge a Street Samurai is expected have over any single random gun drone is smaller. And for reasons too complicated to bother explaining involving program limits, all Hackers in SR5 are required by law to invest in a bunch of drones, so the opportunity cost for them having a bunch of gun drones is very low. It's basically impossible to make a Street Samurai in SR5 that isn't constantly overshadowed by hackers in combat.

If you go back to game design fundamentals, there's no particular reason that having a bunch of gun drones has to amount to anything more than a moderate dicepool bonus to your attacks for the turn. But Shadowrun shows its D&D roots hard by tying numbers of attacks to number of weapons. And just like D&D monsters can make an extra attack for having a spike on their head, so too does Shadowrun give you a whole extra attack for each gun you have firing. And that system has always made the offensive output of Riggers obscenely titanic compared to what any other characters can do. And the specific monkey on typewriters changes that SR5 made to the rules have made that effect much more dramatic and important.

-Username17

[maglag]

Thanks for the explanation!

So yeah, it seems quite sucky design to declare "each dude only gets one shot per round"+"this dude gets a bunch of minions"

[Whipstitch]

And the specific monkey on typewriters changes that SR5 made to the rules have made that effect much more dramatic and important.

-Username17

Too true. The problem existed in SR4 but the ceiling on what Samurai could do was high enough that it could still be obscured somewhat by the MC/Encounter design. After all, the game is intended to reward legwork and getting the drop on your opponents, so many street level groups are more or less satisfied if the Samurai can sneak good and cleanly solo Paul Blart and his Doberman light security drones in combat. By contrast in SR5 your damage output is low enough that it gets noticed even if the MC refrains from trolling you with two dozen taser equipped RC cars.

[phlapjackage]

Thanks for the explanation!

So yeah, it seems quite sucky design to declare "each dude only gets one shot per round"+"this dude gets a bunch of minions"

The worst thing to my mind is just how fucking stupid the implementation is. What is an "attack"? If I throw a grenade at the ground at someones feet, is that an attack? Yes? How about throwing a rock at the same place then? Maybe? So basically the same action (throw something at someone's feet) exists in a quantum state based on whether the GM considers it an attack or not.

[phlapjackage]

Found this quote about the upcoming rules-lite version of SR:

JMH: That sounds about right. One difference that comes to my mind is that in SR5, the rules and resulting dice rolls very much determine the direction of the story; in Anarchy, the story as a collaborative effort carries the game forward, with dice rolls adding spice and flavor to that story.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader how to react to this...

[Ghremdal]

It sounds like something Mearls would spiel about 5e. The plague is spreading...

[Blade]

Generally speaking in Shadowrun what prevents everyone from replacing streetsams with drones is just that few players actually want to play a rigger, compared to those who wants to play streetsams.

Many runs could be handled better by drones than by meatbags: stealth drones can be stealthier (and/or less conspicuous) than people, combat drones have generally speaking a better firepower and a better resistance than meatbags and you don't need the hacker/decker to come along if one of his drone can just cut his way to an optic cable and plug himself in the network.

The biggest drawback is that while few GMs will have the streetsam lose his limbs and cyberware when hit with bullets, most will have the rigger handle the repairs and destruction of drones. If the GM is not generous in nuyens, this can make the rigger become less and less efficient as the campaign progresses.

[rasmuswagner]

Generally speaking in Shadowrun what prevents everyone from replacing streetsams with drones is just that few players actually want to play a rigger, compared to those who wants to play streetsams.

Many runs could be handled better by drones than by meatbags: stealth drones can be stealthier (and/or less conspicuous) than people, combat drones have generally speaking a better firepower and a better resistance than meatbags and you don't need the hacker/decker to come along if one of his drone can just cut his way to an optic cable and plug himself in the network.

The biggest drawback is that while few GMs will have the streetsam lose his limbs and cyberware when hit with bullets, most will have the rigger handle the repairs and destruction of drones. If the GM is not generous in nuyens, this can make the rigger become less and less efficient as the campaign progresses.

I believe the traditional counter-move is "fuck the mission, we're stealing cars and greyhawking these dead guards".

[Hadanelith]

Found this quote about the upcoming rules-lite version of SR:

JMH: That sounds about right. One difference that comes to my mind is that in SR5, the rules and resulting dice rolls very much determine the direction of the story; in Anarchy, the story as a collaborative effort carries the game forward, with dice rolls adding spice and flavor to that story.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader how to react to this...

Sounds like Bear World. Not even worth pirating, much less spending actual cash on.

[Mask_De_H]

Found this quote about the upcoming rules-lite version of SR:

JMH: That sounds about right. One difference that comes to my mind is that in SR5, the rules and resulting dice rolls very much determine the direction of the story; in Anarchy, the story as a collaborative effort carries the game forward, with dice rolls adding spice and flavor to that story.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader how to react to this...

Sounds like Bear World. Not even worth pirating, much less spending actual cash on.

Or Leverage, which is useful enough for Frank to steal from for Asymmetric Threat.

Or marketing patter, which is ultimately meaningless.

[pragma]

I think it's likely to be most like the Valiant Universe RPG they've been hocking. It's rules light and they've already played around with it. I also find it so wafer thin as to be meaningless.

That said, maybe lightning strikes and they knock this out of the park instead of making a Bear World variant. Shadowrun carries around a ton of baggage, and someone who was willing to really put it under the knife could concevably make some cool rules. I doubt Catalyst is that someone, which is a shame because the game needs work badly.

[Aryxbez]

If you go back to game design fundamentals, there's no particular reason that having a bunch of gun drones has to amount to anything more than a moderate dicepool bonus to your attacks for the turn.

An interesting idea that intrigued me upon first read of this. How doable would this be, in applying it to SR4? On Off-hand guess, you would have one main robot you hop-into, with other murder bots only adding +1 bonuses up to a maximum? Perhaps depending the amount of bots in your firing squad attack it adds +X, achieving diminishing returns with more robots needed to get bigger bonuses? Alternatively the squad of bots is a vague number at all times measured by some threshold that would lessen them as the main bot gets damaged? Just tossing out half-baked ideas, but interested to see what further suggestions to make that idea more of a reality.

Unrelated note I've Two other Queries:

1.) Replacing the pointless Immortal Elves (and their history) with the theoretical Immortal Dwarves, and the Immortal Ork Lich thief guy. In what ways would it change the SR setting, and kind of stories do you think it could provide? Obviously Immortal Teen-Elfs never mattered, and so replacing their history doesn't mean much, but all the same I'd be interested to explore the implications those two beings could have on the setting, especially involving the PC's.


2.) Do you guys know a Good Definitive resource for Shadowrun Lingo? I really do like the whole language of the setting, and I would want to make some effort in using it in a campaign I'd run of it some day. I know there was the Shadowslang Glossary, but looks like the service keeping it up expired (yay for Cached), but it added its own?, which I feel may complicate to what's canon, and likely more interesting (unless canon lingo is mostly stupid).

[phlapjackage]

An interesting idea that intrigued me upon first read of this. How doable would this be, in applying it to SR4? On Off-hand guess, you would have one main robot you hop-into, with other murder bots only adding +1 bonuses up to a maximum? Perhaps depending the amount of bots in your firing squad attack it adds +X, achieving diminishing returns with more robots needed to get bigger bonuses? Alternatively the squad of bots is a vague number at all times measured by some threshold that would lessen them as the main bot gets damaged? Just tossing out half-baked ideas, but interested to see what further suggestions to make that idea more of a reality.

My first instinct was to invoke the Teamwork rules, but then after a moment I realized that is a shit idea, as having to roll for each bot is the exact problem we're trying to avoid. Yeah, I think a flat +X bonus to attack would suffice, maybe with different bot weapons/'softs increasing the +X depending. And I don't think there would need to be a maximum to the total bonus, as "apple stacking" wouldn't seem to be a problem here, logistically getting 10000000+ murder bots in the same place attacking the same target would either be a) impossible or b) an epic plan.

[maglag]

An interesting idea that intrigued me upon first read of this. How doable would this be, in applying it to SR4? On Off-hand guess, you would have one main robot you hop-into, with other murder bots only adding +1 bonuses up to a maximum? Perhaps depending the amount of bots in your firing squad attack it adds +X, achieving diminishing returns with more robots needed to get bigger bonuses? Alternatively the squad of bots is a vague number at all times measured by some threshold that would lessen them as the main bot gets damaged? Just tossing out half-baked ideas, but interested to see what further suggestions to make that idea more of a reality.

My first instinct was to invoke the Teamwork rules, but then after a moment I realized that is a shit idea, as having to roll for each bot is the exact problem we're trying to avoid. Yeah, I think a flat +X bonus to attack would suffice, maybe with different bot weapons/'softs increasing the +X depending. And I don't think there would need to be a maximum to the total bonus, as "apple stacking" wouldn't seem to be a problem here, logistically getting 10000000+ murder bots in the same place attacking the same target would either be a) impossible or b) an epic plan.

Or you can make it advance at a logharitmic scale. So 1 murderbot is +1, 2 is +2, 4 is +3, 8 is +4, 16 is +5 and such so that you get diminishing returns.

[phlapjackage]

Or you can make it advance at a logharitmic scale. So 1 murderbot is +1, 2 is +2, 4 is +3, 8 is +4, 16 is +5 and such so that you get diminishing returns.

I'm not sure that would work well, as I think having "breakpoints" like this isn't a good idea. What if you had 7 murderbots? That's only a +3, the same as if you had only 4 bots. So people are a) incentivized to only get the breakpoint number of bots, and b) defenders destroying bots sometimes does nothing at all.

But if there needs to be some kind of limit, maybe limit the number of drones in a "swarm" or focus-fired based on 'soft rating / OS rating / ?

I guess one thing with the bonus added by multiple murderbots, is that you don't want to allow the combined bonus to do unrealistic things, like take out a tank with 100 light-pistol bots. "Flatten light ammo against armor faster than ever" and all that. That might already be covered with armor/penetration rules, idk.

[Grek]

The obvious benefit to murder murderbots is that you can shoot more things, not that you can shoot more accurately. Let each one lay down a cone of fire, but roll a single time to see how much fire each cone contains. Multiple bots = larger area, not more damage.

[Ferret]

Patrick Goodman is now the official Shadowrun 5e errata coordinator, in a process modeled after the Battletech Errata process.

http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/ind ... ic=24481.0

Anybody we know get tapped to join?

[Rawbeard]

how does the Battletech Errata process look like?

[Orca]

how does the Battletech Errata process look like?

Apparently like this according to the guy claiming it as inspiration.

[Username17]

how does the Battletech Errata process look like?

So basically they have web forums, right? And then they get big internet arguments started on those web forums about what is or is not fucked up in some book or another. Then they have someone go through those pie fights and propose some fixes. Then there are more pie fights, and they publish something else.

So... pretty much exactly the Pathfinder strategy.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

if you know a bit about battletech lore and ask this question, just remember the fact that they accidentally glassed the grey death legion . .

[Rawbeard]

Christ... this should be great for SR... Is the game even still alive? do they publish books still?

[Stahlseele]

Which one?
Battletech or Shadowrun?
There will be a new advanced magic book(because of course there needs to be more magicrun) in 2017.
Battletech . . i haven't really been following anymore in terms of the CBT Boardgame and books since i got banned on their boards.

[Neurosis]

Shadowrun 5E is doing very well right now commercially, by industry standards, as much as we all despise it.