How to make Shadowrun less bad

[Smirnoffico]

So anyway, various people thought that we should have a thread about how to make Shadowrun be less bad instead of more bad <snip> I think making such a new thread is probably a good idea.

So, I want to make Shadowrun less bad. I like Shadowrun in general, I like playing games about Shadowrun and I want the game to be better.

I assume it is agreed that SR4 would be the best starting point bar total overhaul of the game as fourth edition tried to fix things and succeeded at least in some areas.

There are some obvious moves like making Body and Strength one stat, probably making Willpower and Charisma one stat.
Matrix will need a complete re-write in any case, so there's no easy fixes. The easiest way is just to use End of Matrix.

What else can be done? Are there even easy fixes or the game badly need serious work to become better? Is it possible to get rid of 'two simple actions to drop a guy' rule without redoing the whole combat system? Is it even needed? (I think there is a need to make at least some guys more durable)

[Whipstitch]

AS is worth thumbing through as well if you haven't already done that, since that game is a direct result of Frank looking at nWoD and SR4 and deciding that pretty much everything but the core mechanic is basically ass.

[fectin]

Step one would be working backwards to generate some explicit design goals. Anything else will leave you flailing.

"Better" is just setting up a game of bring me a rock.

[silva]

Step one would be working backwards to generate some explicit design goals. Anything else will leave you flailing.

This.

[Dean]

I don't know Shadowrun well. There are a number of things people say about the game that, even from an outside observer's view, seem obviously unfixable. I will now present the problems I assume Shadowrun has and my solutions to those problems in an attempt to see how close I can get to the truth by using broad gaming design principles as a whole.

Mages can do things other classes can't do because they have magic. They can also do things other classes can do because while magic is role protected equipment and training are not. So if a Mage can buy a katana and subdermal plating and a supercomputer and a machine gun he can do anything you can do even if it's not quite as well. Conversely other classes can't buy a spellbook and start doing what the Mage does.
Street Samurai's suck because they just sound like people who bought equipment. If I can turn a bodyguard into a Street Samurai by dropping 500 grand then that class is bullshit. If the class is defined by gear then it should be defined by being so good at using that gear that just having it doesn't bring you close to their level. They also need somewhere to grow upwardly in power. The class should probably become Iron Man at some point and fly and shoot lasers and be virtually invulnerable. That way when the Mage in your party is summoning spirits you can summon the helidrones that you can bring to the party. Also since it's a "Fighter" it's gonna be garbage out of combat and that needs to be fixed.

Hacking sounds more like a subclass than a class. It should probably just be a series of abilities that being a "Hacker" lets you perform. Your equipment shouldn't effect your abilities too much. You should need basic equipment to do it at all and a better "Cyberdeck" should add a die or two to your Hacking die pool but it shouldn't be that big a deal. The man in the hot seat and not the pricetag on the rig should be the important thing.

Rigging just seems like something non magic hero's level up into. If flying drones around or flying your own iron man suit is what hackers and Street Samurai leveled up into then the mundane class could just be one class with two separate foci. The combat focused side (Samurai) and the out of combat focused side (Hacker). This would also add social abilities to the Hacker milieu which is good because that's important to actual hacking.

Your classes then become Magic Hero, Skill Hero, and Might Hero. Which is pretty traditional and provably workable.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Doesn't a mage with subdermal plating lose a bunch of magic in Shadowrun?

[OgreBattle]

Step 1) Download After Sundown

Step 2) Play Shadowrun with it, making up rules on the fly for cybernetics and hacking

Step 3) Post your houserules on TGDMB so we can look at it and discuss.

As for my own feelings... well how different can we make it from SF? I don't think Hacker is a primary role, it's something you do in addition to
-Being a Wizard
-Being a Gun Toting Killing Machine
-Being a Rigger

And the above 3 can also drive cars, so driver isn't a main role.
You also need a way for technology to fuck with magic, like throwing a silver grenade filled with annointed oils at a spirit/witch, shooting literal silver bullets at stuff, carrying around a ghostbusters/40k backpack, wave around a force sword while wearing a psychic hood, and so on.

And the rules set should let my Street Samurai turn into this:

And also wizards covered in beeeees... because I really want a MGS RPG

[Dean]

Doesn't a mage with subdermal plating lose a bunch of magic in Shadowrun?

Maybe? As I said I don't know. But still, does he lose magic by wearing body armor? Does he lose magic by holding a machine gun?

If there is a limited number of "Awesome Slots" that you either plug Magic or Hardware into then we're still left with Magic Hero's being able to fill their slots with Magic OR Hardware and non-magic hero's only being able to choose Hardware. Which means however good the hardware options were, being a Mage was still an objectively better choice because you give up nothing and can grab Hardware upgrades if you like them anyway.

[Smirnoffico]

Step one would be working backwards to generate some explicit design goals. Anything else will leave you flailing.

That's on obviously right step. But going through design goals, power 17 or whatever will eventually lead to rebuilding Shadowrun, not fixing the existing system. And that will also add personal preferences to the game, making it even more a distinct game from Shadowrun. For example, I don't see any reason to additionally cripple melee attacks by making them complex action or making them easier to dodge. First thing, i like melee characters as much as I like ranged ones and in my vision of magic cyberpunk there's equal place for gunbunnies and adept-kung-fu-ninjas. Second, melee attacks already have inherent weaknesses like the need to be in melee or dependance on at least two physical stats to deal damage, so there's no need to nerf melee types further. But that's my personal opinion and I recognise other opinions and know that some people believe that melee is redundant in a modern-style game. That's purely preferential, so doesn't need fixing - it's a home-ruling area.

If the aim is to fix Shadowrun, not create a new game, the right way would be to go to the initial design goals for the game, which is pretty much impossible as we don't know what the people that invented Shadowrun thought, unless Frank has some insight on the matter (and knowing his general awareness, that can bevery much true). On the very basic level we know that Shadowrun is a game about corporate espionage and sabotage set in a world where man meats machine and magic set in a semi-post-apocalypse world (not sure that's relevant to game mechanics).

The second logical step is to point out problem spots that need addressing, which is rather hard without knowing the initial intent, but i think Frank pointed out a lot of broken things and useless relics of past editions in his review.

I don't want to make my own Shadowrun hack, if I wanted this, I would rather use Frank's games - After Sundown and Asymmetric Threat are already here, and I trust Frank's judgement on game mechanic issues more than my own, I just don't have enough experience. And for the record, I do think that Shadowrun need a full reconstruction, probably resetting the world and starting all over.

But the initial suggestion was to discuss how to make Shadowrun better, and I my intent was to start the discussion, not present an already written set of rules for review.

[OgreBattle]

Does Asymmetric Threat already have playable rules? I've only seen the megathread on it cover concepts like races and technology but not a playable rules set.

[silva]

On the very basic level we know that Shadowrun is a game about corporate espionage and sabotage

Not at all. If that was true, the game Combat and Vehicles sections wouldnt be as big as its now, and you would have greater focus on actual Infiltration (perhaps an actual mechanic or something similar).

I heard Frank say "Shadowrun is about planning a run in a very detailing way... and then kicking the front door down shouting PREPARE TO DIE!". Its very much true. So, no, espionage and sabotage is not really what Shadowrun is about.

[Whipstitch]

On the very basic level we know that Shadowrun is a game about corporate espionage and sabotage

Not at all. If that was true, the game Combat and Vehicles sections wouldnt be as big as its now, and you would have greater focus on actual Infiltration (perhaps an actual mechanic or something similar).

Nah, sorry bro, you're an idiot. The game is largely about getting paid money to troubleshoot shady situations and fuck with megacorps. The only reason your head is unable to find its way out of your ass is due to the setting having elements of magic and cyberpunk. That changes the inspiration from Ocean's Eleven or Ronin or whatever the fuckity fuck heist movie it is that you're obsessed with and instead cribs from Count Zero. And if you don't know about Count Zero you should probably just accept the fact that you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

[Username17]

Does Asymmetric Threat already have playable rules? I've only seen the megathread on it cover concepts like races and technology but not a playable rules set.

Nope. And realistically, it's not going to get them until after I have my residency sorted. Although at this point, I am willing to let Shadowrun just go away. Catalyst is running Shadowrun into the ground of course, but now that it's after 2012 and no Awakening happened, I think it's probably time to let the setting as-is go and do a full reboot. Basically, I see Shadowrun today as about where World of Darkness is - the current official line is clearly off its meds, but that doesn't mean that we should revert things to the nineties. A reboot is necessary, just not by the people who currently own the license to the property. That means that the way forward is to in fact make a new property that happens to use many of the same core conceits. D&D can be (nearly) timeless because it happens in a fantasy world. But games that happen in our world have to change with our understanding of our world.

Now, how much of Shadowrun's original 80s aesthetic or 4th edition's iSthetic you want to adopt is a matter of taste. Certainly, I don't there's actually anything wrong with popping in a Battle Beast CD, turning up the volume to 11 and hacking out some 80s futurism. But personally, I think I was done with the 80s by 2003 at the latest. I'd like things to go in a more Ghost-in-the-Shell direction. Modern cyberpunk shares several key conceits, but isn't actually all that much like 80s cyberpunk in several other key aspects. More climate change, less acid rain.

Balancing archetypes is one of your core missions as a game designer, and your big hurdle obviously is the magician/cyborg divide. There are a lot of ways you can tackle it, but historically there have been basically two problems: that of mages being able to do the things cyborgs do and still have a protected role as a magic user; and that of the magic having high end effects that the cyborg has no equal to. Ideally, the whole Essence loss thing was supposed to address both problems, but it really didn't. In editions 1-3, you're mostly looking at mages being able to cover the entire Street Samurai's shtick while still having invaluable and irreplaceable astral skills, and in 4th edition that's much harder but magic is uncapped and agility is capped and at higher levels the mages make cyborgs feel small in the pants.

There are a lot of ways you can handle that. In 3rd edition, they tried to split the Street Samurai's skills up to make it more expensive for the mage to horn in on street samurai territory. This is actually exactly backwards, as it makes Street Samurai more narrowly focused and thus easier for mages to Chinese Room. Splitting magic skills would make it such that mages had less ability to metastasize into other roles. But the power level issue is a lemma with multiple solutions. Basically, you can keep everyone "street" or you can allow everyone to advance into superheroic territory. If the street shaman never grows past the stage in which shooting a dude with pistol in a "very fast and accurate manner" is impressive and valuable to him, then it's OK if that's all a street samurai is about. If, on the other hand, the mage runner becomes powerful enough to change the weather and influence battlefields... then the street samurai needs to become a super soldier capable of influencing whole battlefields as well.

-Username17

[Maxus]

Sounds like the cyborg from One-Punch Man, then. Laser cannons built into his arms and all that.

I have absolutely no problem with this.

[Dean]

And the rules set should let my Street Samurai turn into this:

Holy shit I assumed Street Samurai's STARTED like that. How much do Street Samurai's actually suck!?

[OgreBattle]

And the rules set should let my Street Samurai turn into this:

Holy shit I assumed Street Samurai's STARTED like that. How much do Street Samurai's actually suck!?

You start as this:

[DSMatticus]

If there is a limited number of "Awesome Slots" that you either plug Magic or Hardware into then we're still left with Magic Hero's being able to take fill their slots with Magic OR Hardware and non-magic hero's only being able to choose Hardware. Which means however good the hardware options were, being a Mage was still an objectively better choice because you give up nothing and can grab Hardware upgrades if you like them anyway.

Euuugh... no. The conclusion (Magicrun) is very much correct, but you are incorrectly identifying why.

In Shadowrun, you have a thing called essence that is supposed to represent the extent to which you are still a human being. Cyborg ninjas set their essence on fire in order to buy upgrades to their body. Mages get penalties to their magic when they lose essence. Cyborg ninjas don't cast magic, and mages don't replace parts of their bodies with machines. Shadowun has a functional (if imperfect) framework for role-protection. The problem is that even with all of those role-protected gadgets, there's nothing in the cyborg's toolbox that the mage can't duplicate, and many things in the mage's toolbox the cyborg can't.

Being a mage isn't objectively better because it's an extra toolbox to pick from - being a mage is objectively better because the magic toolbox is objectively better than the toolbox you give up to be a mage.

And the rules set should let my Street Samurai turn into this:

Holy shit I assumed Street Samurai's STARTED like that. How much do Street Samurai's actually suck!?

Most of the cybernetics that make you feel like you are genuinely blurring the line between man and machine are both expensive and ass. At chargen, a decently-optimized street sam is throwing down fuck-off huge piles of dice in combat and very respectable piles in breaking and entering related tasks, but they look pretty much like everyone else.

[Blade]

Over its very long life, Shadowrun has seen many different changes. It has gone through many different companies, line developers and writers, but it has also gone through many cultural changes.
Cyberpunk, and its perception and impact has changed more in the last 30 yeasr than, say, heroic fantasy.

As a result, even in the fanbase and in the "grognard" fanbase, you'll have many different playstyles, and many different visions of the game and universe. Some will play Ocean's Eleven with elves, other will play CoC with cyber, others will play Raymond Chandler with elves and cyber, others will play GitS with magic...
Some will play mercenaries in the jungle, others will play gang of losers in the streets. Some want their characters to be able to shrug off artillery fire, others want it to be possible to die in the gutter after getting stabbed by a junkie with a screwdriver.

In my opinion, there are three ways to deal with it:
- Acknowledge it and do something very broad and generic and some optional rules, that will allow people to play THEIR Shadowrun.
- Force people into THE ONE TRUE SHADOWRUN. Decide that Shadowrun is "[...] with [...]" and fuck everyone who thinks different.
- Split the game into different lines. Have a basic ruleset and universe that's broad and generic, but have a few specific implementation with their own quirk and personality.

The first solution was more or less the trend in the early days of SR4. It's Peter Taylor inserting a drawing of a guy with both a Black Trenchcoat and a Pink Mohawk in SR4A to tell people that it's ok to play it the way they like. The problem with that, it's that it's like trying to please everyone with music or food: you end up with something bland that everyone can tolerate, but that lacks personality and flavor and that leaves everyone wishing for some changes.

The second solution is more or less what some SR5 writers are trying to do. It's good to give the line a strong personality, and to make sure everyone is playing the same game, but it's shutting a lot of doors.

The third solution is the best for me. My split would be something like:
- Shadowrun 2035. The techno-thriller variant. Old nation-states are falling apart, new powers are rising, the balance of power is shifting, and shadow professionals are in high demand. Low on combat, magic and cyber, but high in intrigue and espionnage, in a universe that's not that different from our own.

- Shadowrun 2050. The 80's cyberpunk variant. Megacorps have won. They dominate the world and do whatever they want, with no concern for metahumanity and the planet. But they're also the only one that can provide safety and billions of wageslaves give up their rights and personalities in exchange for that safety. The rest live in the margins and cracks of society. They poor, their life is a hell, but they're free. More emphasis on combat, style over substance and "stick it to the Man" mindset.

- Shadowrun 2070. The post-cyberpunk variant. The world was doomed, but it got better. Over time, the megacorps realized that hurting metahumanity was hurting both their customers and employees, and was bad for the bottom-line. Technology found solutions to environmental issues, even if some of them are just short-term. It's hard to say if the world is truly better off, or if it's just made to look that way, but things don't seem as bleak as they did. But the world still has its shadows. The people living in the margins have cut themselves further and further from society and now live in weird societies with their own culture. And the megacorporations still have dirty jobs that need to get done.

They would all share the same resolution mechanism and basic rules, but each of them would have their own variants to fit the expected playstyle, as well as their own tone.
Ideally, they'd each have 2 levels as well: one low-key/down to the ground and the other one power-play/high stakes. For example, Shadowrun 2050 players could either play gutterpunks for hire or shadow heroes that defend the world against bug spirits and vile megacorporation schemes.

[Username17]

As far as mechanics go, Shadowrun 4 has what in essence is a very nice action resolution system. You roll a pile of dice against a threshold, you succeed at the task if your threshold is made and you don't if you don't. It's very versatile and actually quite fast. It also plays very nicely with the teamwork rules, which are probably the tightest I've seen in any game. The assistant rolls a test, and hits turn into bonus dice. Obviously you'd keep that.

But while SR4 has a very solid generic action resolution system, it has a lot of clutter in the specific subsystems. The Matrix system especially, but really the vehicle rules, the extended test rules, and the combat rules all operate on too many die rolls. Roughly in that order, actually. Magic actually mostly rolls about the right number of die rolls, except where it runs into extended tests, where of course it rolls too many. Similarly, the social system could if anything be expanded save for those instances where it uses extended tests where it becomes too fiddly.

As for supporting multiple playstyles, I honestly don't even think that's particularly hard to do. Shadowrun desperately needs a better set of guidelines and explanations for how powerful your characters actually are relative to other things in the world - and once you've done that it's a fairly simple math problem to provide chargen rules for people at different power levels. Similarly for supporting play during different time periods: it is already an exceptionally good idea to mark future gear with the decade it becomes available for a whole host of reasons (sometimes you are fighting the Winter Soldier, sometimes you find an old military cache, sometimes you're in a shitty part of the world with outdated supplies, etc.), and once you've done that it is relatively trivial to insist that players equip themselves with nothing that becomes available after the 2040s when playing in the 2040s.

That being said, I think it's a fine idea to have expansion books catered to different time periods and power levels. You could have "End of Empire," a book about playing SR in the 2030s, or "Existential Threat," a book about playing characters at a power level where they fight vampire uprisings and disarm nuclear devices and shit. But basic playability at a number of power levels and time periods can and should be provided in a single basic book.

-Username17

[Longes]

Personally, I'd go one of the two ways with the hacking system:
Either leave hacking as a province of the NPCs, because security gets better, and hacking takes more and more time
Or (because hackers are one of the cyberpunk's pilars and lack of them would cause nerdrage) put hacking on the magic chassies. This way, you buy a "Hacker" quality and buy "spells", like "Extract file" or "Reboot" or "Protect". They are all LOS, so the hacker needs to go with the team, they are all complex action, so the hacker acts in the same time as everyone else does. And, if you key all of them to one skill, then the hacker can take other skills to be useful while not hacking. Possibly combine the two, and make all PC hackers - technomancers. That way you can just answer "it's magic" to all questions.

[Korwin]

Does Asymmetric Threat already have playable rules? I've only seen the megathread on it cover concepts like races and technology but not a playable rules set.

Nope. And realistically, it's not going to get them until after I have my residency sorted. Although at this point, I am willing to let Shadowrun just go away. Catalyst is running Shadowrun into the ground of course, but now that it's after 2012 and no Awakening happened, I think it's probably time to let the setting as-is go and do a full reboot.

Asymmetric Thread wasnt an full reboot?

[Username17]

The question of what to do about hacking is of course a difficult one. There are many potential workable systems., and all of them are really different from each other. But crucially, all of the workable systems would be extremely different from any system Shadowrun has ever had in any of its editions or expansions.

Now I personally wouldn't be at all adversed to telling players that they were actually required by law to be able to do a little bit of hacking because it's the god damn late 21st century and a super criminal who can't erase a security camera is just a cell block resident. Certainly, it doesn't seem weird that we tell all the players to get a firearm of some kind. But just as people will want to be a weapons specialist, there will be players who want to play a hacking specialist. And since hacking specialists are the protagonists of nearly half of all cyberpunk literature, that's a tough request to turn down.

Now if you weren't doing Shadowrun specifically but a similarly themed cyberpunk fantasy game set in the near future, you could pull a similar deal with magicians and riggers. You could tell all the players that they were born after the stars were right, and if they want to be super criminals they have to be minimally knowledgeable about the use of magic such that they can make a simple charm and disable a ward. And of course, that you live in a fucking metroplex and even if you aren't a piloting specialist you still need to have a means to get around town. Honestly, SR5 is totally going that direction with its magic bullet preparations, and I really only condemn it on the grounds that the mechanics are bad and they haven't worked it into any of their fiction or sample characters. The basic idea of having the cyborgs and hackers slap elder signs on their flak jackets seems pretty solid.

-Username17

[Seerow]

1) I agree with making street Samurais end up like Raiden. Possibly right down to ripping out other peoples' cyber and using that to regenerate your own health. But yeah there's a lot of stuff you can pull from MGR both conceptually and mechanically and make it work for the Samurai.

2) To balance out the Mage vs the Samurai, I'd make a few changes. First, you can initiate a number of times equal to your essence, so there is a cap on mage power.

Second, you can integrate ware into your body, spending karma to regain a point of essence. Ideally find some way to word this so the regained essence is not usable with Magic (say rather than gaining essence you gain some other stat that works like essence for the purpose of cyber). Basically give Sammy's an upgrade path similar to what Mages have.

Third, change how Foci work. Rather than being bound with Karma, they act almost like magical cyberware. You bind them to your essence instead. Essence bound to a Foci can't be used for Magic or Cyber (so a Mage with 6 essence with a force 2 Power Focus would be limited to 5 Magic until he initiates).

Fourth, let Mundanes bind certain focus types. It was mentioned above that a big part of the problem is that a Mage can dabble in to pick up Street Sammy toys, but the other way around doesn't work. Even with the drawbacks associated with getting Ware on your mage, the Mage can pick up the more efficient pieces to get an edge, while a mundane never can. This lets the Mundane pick up the occasional magic trinket that helps them out, or get access to a particularly useful mage trick (For example a focus that grants Astral Perception).


I have no idea how much the above fucks with the Shadowrun setting expectations, but I think crunch-wise it would be functional for balancing the two big archtypes.


3) Hacker, Rigger, Technomancer, and Adept. The four other Archtypes. Adept really gets fixed pretty easily with the introduction of new power options and adjusted costs. Give adepts some unique abilities and the ability to do cool stuff beyond bigger than average dicepools, and they're done.

The Mundane Hacker is probably an archetype that should go out to pasture. It can be a good subspecialization, but as a major archetype, they're always going to be left to flounder. You can design a virus or whatever in your downtime and be competent enough to deploy it, but getting good at hacking should take a minor character investment and not expected to be your major role, much like the Face is now. One skill group should cover everything your hacker wants to do, and at no point should the skill system get more complex than 2-3 rolls (and most situations should resolve in one).

The Technomancer on the other hand steps up as a major archetype, because since it's quasimagic it is allowed to have a broader scope than the mundane archetype and doesn't care so much how actual computer systems work. So here you just start making up new tech-related powers and tossing them at the Technomancer to pick up in the way a Mage picks up spells. Then he can also do whatever a mundane hacker can do without spending money on a commlink (though he still needs the skills to fill that role if he wants to. Not every technomancer has to be a badass hacker, they just lend themselves to it very well).

For the Rigger, I like what Frank was saying in the other thread about them requiring as much cyber investment as a street samurai. Basically, bring that back. Being a great rigger means investing basically all of your investment into Rigging. The biggest issue will be making that cyber meaningful without overpowering the Rigger (which is currently already very strong), but this will probably come in the form of taking a lot of baseline functionality away from riggers and reintroducing it via cyber.

[Longes]

SR5 is totally going that direction with its magic bullet preparations

I should probably tell you this. The devs have stated, that you can't make magic bullets, because magical stuff would be destroyed when firing the bullet. That's why none of the sample characters have magic bullets. You can make magic arrows, but you wouldn't be able to touch them without the spell going off.

[Username17]

SR5 is totally going that direction with its magic bullet preparations

I should probably tell you this. The devs have stated, that you can't make magic bullets, because magical stuff would be destroyed when firing the bullet. That's why none of the sample characters have magic bullets. You can make magic arrows, but you wouldn't be able to touch them without the spell going off.

That doesn't make any sense. There are tungsten bullets that don't appreciably deform when fired, and if that's what it took to shoot spells at people, that is what people would use. But beyond that even, Shadowrun technology includes gyrojets and gauss guns where the projectile isn't traumatized at all because acceleration is continuous. So there's literally no possible way you could prevent people from putting spells on bullets if they were really committed to doing that.

And if you did require people to use gauss guns and gyrojets to shoot spells around, the setting would look even less like what they describe and show in the book! Because professionals would then use gauss guns and gyrojets rather than chamber explosion propelled bullet utilizing guns. At best that argument is that you can't load a spell into a Colt Manhunter, not that there aren't weapons you can load a spell into. And if that was the case, people would ditch the Colts, not the spell bullets.

This is why Catalyst can't make nice things. Their devs are incapable of thinking two steps or even a single step ahead of their ideas. They make a proclamation about how things work, and then apparently don't even try to imagine what people would actually do in response to things working like that. Fucking idiots.

-Username17