Is Shadowrun the most playable game ever ?

[silva]

I see lots of games out there with very good settings, but not too many that combine it with an actually playable setup. Take Unknown Armies for example. Its a damn original acid-fueled trip of a setting. Its Hotline Miami in book form. But I always got myself thinking "ok, but what da hell do I do with it ?". Same goes for Eclipse Phase, Continuum, Tekumel, Glorantha, Planescape, Dark Suns, and the majority of other settings out there I like.

And this, I think, is one of the main points of Shadowrun. Besides having a hell of an original and well-developed setting, its premise is one of the most playable Ive seen. Everything is set so you know exactly what you will be doing and how to do it from the get-go, and it meshes perfectly with the awesome setting around, never feeling out of place. Contrast this to D&D in its original form, for example - why are you risking yourself going underground to face monsters ? How these monsters ecosystems manage to continue existing ? And why are there underground complexes in the first place ? - if you begin to ask too many questions, the setting and premise begins to crumble. This never happens with Shadowrun.

Thoughts ? Agree ? Disagree ? Are there other games like Shadowrun out there ?

[souran]

The most PLAYABLE game ever is D&D 4E. There are a lot of reasons not to like the way it plays, or complaints about its depiction of D&D or any of the other myriad complaints about it.

However, for all that, if you grab monsters out of the monster manual and have them fight PCs of the appropriate level and get the results that are similar to the expectations of the DMG.

The skill-challenge system is ass, but it is playable and you do get both success and failures just playing it straight.

Most people really couldn't give 2 shits about about the ecology of monsters. They want the game to conform to expectations from the source material even if those expectations don't make any sense.

If you want the game that most people enjoy playing then its gotta be 3.x d20 D&D. 3.x D20 D&D is probably the game that fits into the sweetspot that most people have for roleplaying where the combination of rules and logic will let people forgive the senseless shit because the rules work. Although it requires a gentlemans agreement or it falls apart at later levels, the game has 10-12 solid levels where you can MOSTLY drop monsters on top of players and everybody thinks that things are challenging and fair.

People will generally care a lot more about things that they have real experience with. So if you have an architect in your group and describe an impossible structure they will care a great deal but everybody's experience in fighting monsters in the dark comes from cultural sources and not first person experience. They will just not care as long as said creatures have loot.

[Orion]

Which skill challenge system? Some versions were near auto-success and others auto-fail? Also, what would you say is the "source material" for 4?

[Insomniac]

I have to take exception to that 4E claim.

First off, that game became a dead edition in 4 years and in that time span it generated about 200 pages of errata. The monster math in particular got so thoroughly changed that people get advised to not even use the first 2 of 5 Monster Manuals. The errata alone for the system is basically an entire core rule book and then some for a more rules-light system.

Secondly, the game is every bit as complex as 3.5 if not more so. There are so many pissant little status conditions, rider effects, auras and damage over time abilities that I found the game to be a major hassle to play. "Beginner" classes from 3.5 like Barbarian and Fighter are really intricate classes. Then you've got all the resource management of daily, encounter and utility powers and item charges making the game a big time book-keeping affair for the entire table. Combat is focused on condition-locking foes and blasting away, not really much different than 3.5 except it takes 19 Save or Sucks in a concerted effort to take down a foe instead of 1 or 2 spells in 3.5. Unless you condition lock and min-max to the hilt, even routine combats can become half hour affairs of grandiloquent, fiddly status condition pillowfights.

The game fails on so many fronts that it can't even handle people on horseback or flying using a bow. You've got to shackle yourself into a ground-based paradigm of Gentleman's Agreements about ranged attacks and mobilities as both a DM and a player or else the game goes out the window.

The system is complex enough and has enough feat taxes and math holes that you've basically got to use a computer program to play.

The mandatory paragon paths and additional 10 levels also make the game more complex than 3.5

This is even before you get into the catastrophe of the 4.5 "Essentials" line which differs just enough to make characters very hard to play with other 4E classes if not impossible.

[Blade]

From the opening post I think that when silva writes about "playable" he doesn't talk about rules, but about the way you easily know what you will be doing in the game.

For example in Shadowrun, you know you will play a group of freelance criminals and that the basic concept will be: you get a job from an employer, you do legwork to prepare the hit, you do hit and then you come back and get paid.

While in Eclipse Phase: you're in space, there's weird stuff and a decentralized group that does stuff to fight weird stuff... no what?

In that context, I think Earthdawn somehow qualifies: every trope of classic fantasy is explained and it makes it very clear why there would be adventurers who go inside dungeons to kill monsters and get treasure.

CoC might also qualify. There's a very generic pattern of "find a mysterious book/letter/clue, investigate it, discover something even more curious, investigate it, discover something horrible, die/go insane/somehow survive but things will never be the same"

[Dragon Instincts]

Shadowrun works well in that regard. Except for the extremely low payment that I see in official publications. It makes no sense at all for highly professional experts to do jobs only they can do for a payment which is just barely enough to cover the costs for the run and a few months of living.

Now, in the new edition they had the brilliant idea of including rules for payment in the core book. I never understood why this wasn't adressed before and was left up to the GM. But like every good idea in SR4, it gets fucked up hard immediately. Not only is the payment waaaaay to low- the rules themselves make no sense at all. Payment is supposed to be calculated AFTER the run. And shooting your way through stuff leads to better payment than being stealthy and subtle.

[silva]

Yep, having actual payment suggestions in the book is a good start, but the way its presented in SR5 is kind of broken.

My group adopts a better method: "base payoff" is the average of the group's lifestyles. Then multiply it according to the level of play as described in the book:

- Street: +0%
- Professional: +100%
- Prime: +200%

Then a all middle lifestyle team (5k nuyens) would charge 5k per run on street level, 10k per run on professional, and 15k on prime. Add to this the usual modifiers (negotiation roll, more difficult opposition, etc) and voila. Also note that these multipliers are customizable acording to groups tastes, so it can pay higher or lower still.

From the opening post I think that when silva writes about "playable" he doesn't talk about rules, but about the way you easily know what you will be doing in the game.

For example in Shadowrun, you know you will play a group of freelance criminals and that the basic concept will be: you get a job from an employer, you do legwork to prepare the hit, you do hit and then you come back and get paid.

While in Eclipse Phase: you're in space, there's weird stuff and a decentralized group that does stuff to fight weird stuff... no what?

Bingo!

In that context, I think Earthdawn somehow qualifies: every trope of classic fantasy is explained and it makes it very clear why there would be adventurers who go inside dungeons to kill monsters and get treasure.

Yep, from the little Ive read about Earthdawn, it seems a hell of well thought out setting and a very playable premise. Btw, what edition do you recommend for a newbie to enter the setting ?

[Blade]

It makes no sense at all for highly professional experts to do jobs only they can do for a payment which is just barely enough to cover the costs for the run and a few months of living.

This is actually something that is highly dependent on the settings. If you consider that runners are professional mercenaries who could get a nice paycheck in a steady job if they just bothered to fill in a form and accepted to take orders, it's true.

If you consider that runners are punks who happened to get some extra edge (magic, some nice implant/drone/commlink/cyberdeck/whatever), that there are hundreds of them that can take a job if one refuses it, and that other job markets are heavily controlled by organized crime, then it can make sense for a runner to risk his life for something that will let him survive two more months.

@silva: I've only played a bit of 1st ed and one game of... 3rd ed I think.

In 1st ed, once you chose your race and class, you had very limited space to customize your character at start (especially regarding knowledge skills or "fluff" skills), and 3rd ed seemed a bit better in that regard.

In both cases, I found the combat uninteresting, long and boring (might have been due to the fact that we were starting characters).

Magic also seemed a bit unusable at low level in 1st ed (long time to be able to cast a not so powerful spell that might not even work that well in the end), but I don't know if it has been improved in 3rd.

[Korwin]

My group adopts a better method: "base payoff" is the average of the group's lifestyles.

What, you earn more for the same job if you have to pay for an Villa?

[Korwin]

It makes no sense at all for highly professional experts to do jobs only they can do for a payment which is just barely enough to cover the costs for the run and a few months of living.

This is actually something that is highly dependent on the settings. If you consider that runners are professional mercenaries who could get a nice paycheck in a steady job if they just bothered to fill in a form and accepted to take orders, it's true.

It's also true, if stealing cars would earn more...

[Blade]

It's also true, if stealing cars would earn more...

I've made a lengthy demonstration on Dumpshock to explain how - in a dystopian setting where organized crime controls the SINless economy - runners can't get more stealing cars that they'll do making runs, no matter what amount that is, and that this price has very little to do with the actual value of cars (or jewelry or magical compound or anything else the runners could steal/make).

[silva]

Yeah, the car stealing argument dont make sense. Any car you rob would fence for a fraction of its cost, and then you would have to deal with this market establishd players - local gangs, mafia, even police. I see a team succeeding at it once or twice, but more than that they would be in trouble.

What, you earn more for the same job if you have to pay for an Villa?

Makes total sense for me. Any autonomous professional consider his living standards when composing his charging fee. Even I, Silva, not an autonomous, only accept jobs in real life that allow me to support my chosen lifestyle.

Also, when hiring a professional specialist, from the babysitter to the IT programmer, its not the employer who say how much it pays, its the specialist who says how much he charges. The fact SR always presented it it the other way around is something really weird.

Lastly, its the most simple way to calc payoffs, that also has a reasonably simple metric (lifestyle). But dont forget that the team charges the average of its lifestyle, so the Villa resident runner wont receive its full lifestyle in cash except if all other runners in the team are also Villa residents.

[silva]

Blade, thanks for the description on Earthdawn. What do you think its the most emblematic edition? The only one to have if you dont have any other option ? (Ie: I think SR2 is the most emblematic edition of the line)

This is actually something that is highly dependent on the settings. If you consider that runners are professional mercenaries who could get a nice paycheck in a steady job if they just bothered to fill in a form and accepted to take orders, it's true.

If you consider that runners are punks who happened to get some extra edge (magic, some nice implant/drone/commlink/cyberdeck/whatever), that there are hundreds of them that can take a job if one refuses it, and that other job markets are heavily controlled by organized crime, then it can make sense for a runner to risk his life for something that will let him survive two more months.

This.

Not all runners are highly successful specialists living in Villas and charging hundreds of thousands for a job. There are different levels of runners the same way are different levels of professionals out there. The SR5 book even acknowledges that through the "street", default and "prime" levels of play.

[kzt]

Yeah, the car stealing argument dont make sense. Any car you rob would fence for a fraction of its cost, and then you would have to deal with this market establishd players - local gangs, mafia, even police. I see a team succeeding at it once or twice, but more than that they would be in trouble.

So you steal a 20K car, hook up with your chop shop operator contact and get 2K for it. Not a bad days work.

Also, when hiring a professional specialist, from the babysitter to the IT programmer, its not the employer who say how much it pays, its the specialist who says how much he charges. The fact SR always presented it it the other way around is something really weird.

It's a perfectly reasonable way of doing stuff. The team gets to decide if they are paying enough and it is assumed that the fixer is arranging clients with teams that have suitable financial means and aspirations.

The whole Johnson meet up is a silly game trope, there is no logical reason why someone pretending to be legitimate wanting deniable actors to do something criminal would want have them meet with him to discuss doing some sort of criminal act. They are criminals, of course they will sell him out if they get caught, if they have something to sell. Having a recording of him explaining what criminal act he wants them to do makes them kind of less then deniable.

Logically you'd be dealing with the fixer, who knows someone who knows someone who wants something done.

[Blade]

So you steal a 20K car, hook up with your chop shop operator contact and get 2K for it. Not a bad days work.

First, you're assuming that the chop shop operator is willing to offer 2K for the car.
Second, even if he does, you can still have the local mob (or gang or car-stealing ring) come and ask for the local business tax, since the car you stole was on their turf. Since you're a nice guy, the business tax will only be 90%.
If you refuse (you're a shadowrunner, you can take care of a few gang members) then it means the local mob has a potential rival, someone who's costing them 2K a day. So they can pay 2K a day to hire someone to take care of him. If for 2K a day they can't get someone (or a team) better than you, then it means you can steal for more than 2K per day.

So you can get up to a market of a value of x nuyens, with x+1 being the cost it takes to pay people who are very likely to be better than you.

If it costs 5000 nuyens to hire a professional better than you, then you can't get a market worth more than 4999 nuyens.

That kind of professional will often be a Shadowrunner. So the maximum amount of money a Shadowrunner can make in any mob-controlled market is roughly the amount of money it costs to hire a Shadowrunner who's about the same level as he is.

Cost of a Shadowrunner = Profits of same Shadowrunner stealing cars (or having an activity in any other mob-controlled market)

Then it all comes down to how desperate shadowrunners are and what their options outside of these activities are. If it's "work for the mob or die" then the cost of a Shadowrunner will be roughly the cost to repay expenses and let the Shadowrunner survive another day. If Ares is offering any runner 30K per month, then it just depends on how much a runner values the fact of not working for Ares. The price of a car doesn't matter.

Logically you'd be dealing with the fixer, who knows someone who knows someone who wants something done.

Depends on the settings. In American criminal fiction (even outside of Shadowrun), the fixer is often the kind of guy who'll say "You want an unregistered gun, that's your business. I can get you one, but I don't want to know why you need it.". In Hong-Kong criminal fiction, the fixer will often be more aware of every details.
It has to do with local business practices and culture.

But it's true that even in the UCAS you should probably be dealing more often with a middleman than with the employer himself.

[virgil]

So you steal a 20K car, hook up with your chop shop operator contact and get 2K for it. Not a bad days work.

First, you're assuming that the chop shop operator is willing to offer 2K for the car.
Second, even if he does, you can still have the local mob (or gang or car-stealing ring) come and ask for the local business tax, since the car you stole was on their turf. Since you're a nice guy, the business tax will only be 90%.

At what point are you just railroading your players to get paid in peanuts for high-end corporate wetwork?

[Blade]

Organized crime taking as much as they can get away with is not railroading, it's actually the thing that's more likely to happen.

Somalian mercs are paid much less than American mercs, even for the same job in Somalia. The question is whether you want to play Somalian mercs or American mercs.

EDIT: Besides, it's not railroading if you offer the players the chance to fight back against the criminal syndicate and focus on the car-stealing business.

[TheFlatline]

So you steal a 20K car, hook up with your chop shop operator contact and get 2K for it. Not a bad days work.

First, you're assuming that the chop shop operator is willing to offer 2K for the car.
Second, even if he does, you can still have the local mob (or gang or car-stealing ring) come and ask for the local business tax, since the car you stole was on their turf. Since you're a nice guy, the business tax will only be 90%.

What makes you think that Santino, who is charging the 90%, isn't going to have a cousin Vinnie, or another crew, or another family, who decides they'll take 75% and just whack Santino?

And at 90% you're dealing with professional murderers anyway who as their usual job are used to getting shot at by paramilitary PMCs. You better have some big fucking muscle to be able to demand anything near that because "we'll break your kneecaps" doesn't have the same weight.

Nah, the kick up will be 10-25%, probably handled by the chop shop. If the shadowrunner wants in good or gets a particularly big score they may have to "show some admiration" but if the situation is a complete screwjob you'll either see the mob power structure taken out or you'll see people not steal cars any more and then the mob's out of all that sweet cash revenue.

[Orion]

I think for Shadowrun to work, you need a really explicit reason why your character can't participate in professional society. Mental illness, parents who pissed off the wrong executive, being a troll, practicing a minority religion, being a drug addict -- you need to have something like that going on to explain how a shadowrun magician, with all the amazing powers that comes with, can end up living in shitty conditions doing dangerous crimes to survive.

[vagrant]

Typically, the conceit was that runners had some sort of philosophical or personal reason for not working for the corps directly - they were Neo-A's, or they were SINless and just straight up discriminated against, or their mentor spirit wasn't cut out for corporate work, or whatever. Yeah, it doesn't make sense for a well-adjusted mercenary to be taking shit jobs as a deniable asset without the protection of a megacorp, but runners traditionally were not well-adjusted wageslaves.

[K]

Typically, the conceit was that runners had some sort of philosophical or personal reason for not working for the corps directly - they were Neo-A's, or they were SINless and just straight up discriminated against, or their mentor spirit wasn't cut out for corporate work, or whatever. Yeah, it doesn't make sense for a well-adjusted mercenary to be taking shit jobs as a deniable asset without the protection of a megacorp, but runners traditionally were not well-adjusted wageslaves.

No, the reason was always "I'm too cool to work for the man."

Punk doesn't need a reason to be a rebel. Reasons are for posers.

[vagrant]

It's all of that, plus I'm too cool to work for the man, man.

[Korwin]

What, you earn more for the same job if you have to pay for an Villa?

Makes total sense for me. Any autonomous professional consider his living standards when composing his charging fee. Even I, Silva, not an autonomous, only accept jobs in real life that allow me to support my chosen lifestyle.

Just because I'm curious, why not accepting Jobs who account for luxury lifestyle regardless of what the real livestyle is?

Or is there an mandatory lifestyle upgrade when the Runners get more competent?

[rasmuswagner]

Also, when hiring a professional specialist, from the babysitter to the IT programmer, its not the employer who say how much it pays, its the specialist who says how much he charges. The fact SR always presented it it the other way around is something really weird.

Yes, because job offers are infinite and job hunting has zero transaction costs and people are perfect rational actors. Not only do you fail Economics 101, you have apparently never had a real job either.

[silva]

Rasmus: Simplification. Its a game, not an economics simulation.

What, you earn more for the same job if you have to pay for an Villa?

Makes total sense for me. Any autonomous professional consider his living standards when composing his charging fee. Even I, Silva, not an autonomous, only accept jobs in real life that allow me to support my chosen lifestyle.

Just because I'm curious, why not accepting Jobs who account for luxury lifestyle regardless of what the real livestyle is?

Or is there an mandatory lifestyle upgrade when the Runners get more competent?

Sorry, I think I didnt get your question. Perhaps due to language barrier. Could you re-phrase this ?