Here's a super-bare-bones exchange between GM and player. No context at all, just the exchange of mechanical stuff.
GM: You encounter this setback.
Player: I want to do this to overcome this setback. I want to use this skill to do that.
GM: I feel like if you used this other skill to do that you could get better Effect, but you can use that skill for Limited Effect. Either way, it's Risky Difficulty.
Player: I know it would be greater Effect if I used that other skill, but I have less dice in that skill. I'm going to roll my first skill choice for Limited Risky.
GM: Do you want to push yourself for an extra die?
Player: No.
GM: I have a Devil's Bargain for you if you want.
Player: Okay.
GM: Here is the Devil's Bargain, go ahead and roll an extra die.
Player: I rolled a 4 and a 3.
GM: Okay so now I describe a number of possible consequences for you to choose from.
Player: I will choose the option where I can try again with a different skill but from a Desperate position.
GM: Okay are you going to push yourself or do you want a Devil's Bargain?
Player: I will push myself for another die. My roll is a 1, 3, and 3. Wow that sucks.
GM: Wow that does suck. Okay you lose your equipment you were using and take a level 2 harm. I'm also going to advance this clock.
Player: I want to resist that.
GM: Which of those do you want to resist? The level 2 harm, losing your weapon, and advancing the clock will all be separate resistance rolls.
Player: Let me roll to resist the level 2 harm first.
GM: Okay but narratively speaking I don't think you can avoid it completely. It will reduce to a level 1 harm.
Player: I understand. Okay, I rolled a 5.
GM: Alright, how's your stress looking? Do you want to roll another resistance roll?
Player: Sure, let's go for losing my weapon next. I rolled a 2.
GM: Do you want to roll to resist the clock now?
Player: No, my stress is pretty high up and besides, I'd like to see what happens when that clock triggers.
That's an exchange between a player and a GM for one single test. It would take an eternity to do in a Play-by-Post setting, unless it was like "we are playing by post from these hours on this day this week, please be refreshing your pages constantly during this time" in which case it'd be easier to play through text in like, IRC or whatever.
I haven't run it yet, but as far as playing it goes, it's not that hard from a purely mechanical perspective. What's difficult is that its explicitly a narrative-driven game that relies on back and forth between players and game master, all of whom are working together to generate what an interesting story. Getting into the proper rhythm takes a bit getting used to.
It really really really isn't. It is somewhat "hard" to run in that it plays very differently from RPGs most of us learned on. Once you get the different mindset though you basically just roll with the players and let them screw up their situation to hilarious results.
Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
It sounds interesting. The flipped the typical FATE action economy on the tale end of the roll. No investing before hand, you choose to expend resources to resist or push. That's kinda cool.
PSN ID - Mostlyjoe Steam ID -TheNotoriusRNG
0
Options
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
I'm not going to put the arch-villain in front of the players for this part coming up. Feels wrong pacing-wise. Next adventure at like the beginning I'll put him in the very beginning ambush/hideout raid I've planned and just have him kill the space marine instead. (Burn one of his fate points mechanical-wise and allow him to go on but knocked out of commission for the adventure, really, but still.)
Blades in the Dark also has factions built into the game, so even if the players kill off NPCs when they encounter them, the groups they belong to have long-term mechanics about combating the organizations the NPCs belonged to, complete with the organization hating the players for killing their NPCs, etc.
@Kadoken I'm a big fan of the "Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff" podcast (because I think they're interesting guys who know a lot about a lot and are fun to listen to, but also because they're very knowledgeable about roleplaying games and offer interesting advice and perspectives), and one of the segments on Episode 336 might be of use to you: they talk about how to introduce an arch-villain to the player group without it immediately turning into a fight (which would inevitably be anticlimactic and boring). I'm not sure how applicable their advice will be to you particular campaign situation (I don't remember the specifics of what's going on there), but maybe you can adapt something.
My favorite piece of the advice was: Steal from Ian Fleming, and introduce the villain to James Bond/the players in a setting where violence would not go down well, like at a soirée or a casino. You can show the villain being an intimidating hard-ass, but they are not physically threatening the players, and the players are less likely to start a physical altercation at the poker table. And if they do, there's ample narrative justification for the arch-villain getting away and the players being detained by third-party security/other guests/etc.
Blades in the Dark also has factions built into the game, so even if the players kill off NPCs when they encounter them, the groups they belong to have long-term mechanics about combating the organizations the NPCs belonged to, complete with the organization hating the players for killing their NPCs, etc.
Blades also has a pretty big subsystem about how dropping bodies is bad. That's tied into the setting but is a pretty good way of nudging things away from murder hobo style.
I'm not going to put the arch-villain in front of the players for this part coming up. Feels wrong pacing-wise. Next adventure at like the beginning I'll put him in the very beginning ambush/hideout raid I've planned and just have him kill the space marine instead. (Burn one of his fate points mechanical-wise and allow him to go on but knocked out of commission for the adventure, really, but still.)
Does that mean the space marine's player has to roll a new character for the adventure, or...? Just curious.
0
Options
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
@Kadoken I'm a big fan of the "Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff" podcast (because I think they're interesting guys who know a lot about a lot and are fun to listen to, but also because they're very knowledgeable about roleplaying games and offer interesting advice and perspectives), and one of the segments on Episode 336 might be of use to you: they talk about how to introduce an arch-villain to the player group without it immediately turning into a fight (which would inevitably be anticlimactic and boring). I'm not sure how applicable their advice will be to you particular campaign situation (I don't remember the specifics of what's going on there), but maybe you can adapt something.
My favorite piece of the advice was: Steal from Ian Fleming, and introduce the villain to James Bond/the players in a setting where violence would not go down well, like at a soirée or a casino. You can show the villain being an intimidating hard-ass, but they are not physically threatening the players, and the players are less likely to start a physical altercation at the poker table. And if they do, there's ample narrative justification for the arch-villain getting away and the players being detained by third-party security/other guests/etc.
I did introduce the archvillain without a fight in the Ian Flemming way, though. I've been calling them as a wimpy high-strung businessman that the archvillain has been acting as. He got another guy to play the part and met them in a Batman (1989)-esque meeting in an art cafe to basically hold them captive for a bit while the rest of the folks were gassed asleep. He brought along daemonic constructs so no one would lift a hand, slammed into the place with an eighteen-wheeler basically, performed a ritual so the place was shrouded in blackness except for a single ethereal candle at the table he gathered them all at, and the place wouldn't allow weapons except those of noble office like a power sword or omnissian axe so they were mainly unarmed with their broken stuff. That went super well and is one of my favorite performances and things I ever did while giving a lot of information pretty naturally.
The issue is I want the stuff to feel real to these folks and the next character I invested a lot of time and thought on didn't really pay off. I assume that's because I mainly told them stuff he did or had him interact with them but only as other characters. I have been told by this thread they must be mechanically engaged if I want to give them a really memorable experience.
I'm not going to put the arch-villain in front of the players for this part coming up. Feels wrong pacing-wise. Next adventure at like the beginning I'll put him in the very beginning ambush/hideout raid I've planned and just have him kill the space marine instead. (Burn one of his fate points mechanical-wise and allow him to go on but knocked out of commission for the adventure, really, but still.)
Does that mean the space marine's player has to roll a new character for the adventure, or...? Just curious.
The space marine is an NPC. They can burn influence to get him along for adventures. They play as normal humans in Dark Heresy. The players can play him but he is an NPC and I made him. He's there to hunt the traitor of his chapter as a kill-marine essentially, but can be "hired" with expending influence to further his search for the traitor.
Kadoken on
0
Options
Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
Blades in the Dark also has factions built into the game, so even if the players kill off NPCs when they encounter them, the groups they belong to have long-term mechanics about combating the organizations the NPCs belonged to, complete with the organization hating the players for killing their NPCs, etc.
Blades also has a pretty big subsystem about how dropping bodies is bad. That's tied into the setting but is a pretty good way of nudging things away from murder hobo style.
I was reading that. Killing folks is a VERY fast way to crank up your heat meter and a lot of "bad thing" clocks. So the PCs are juggling getting what they want without advancing the 'bad things happen'. Worse, if you crank your heat up too fast, when you do time (and doing time is assumed), it's SO much worse for you.
Blades in the Dark also has factions built into the game, so even if the players kill off NPCs when they encounter them, the groups they belong to have long-term mechanics about combating the organizations the NPCs belonged to, complete with the organization hating the players for killing their NPCs, etc.
Blades also has a pretty big subsystem about how dropping bodies is bad. That's tied into the setting but is a pretty good way of nudging things away from murder hobo style.
I was reading that. Killing folks is a VERY fast way to crank up your heat meter and a lot of "bad thing" clocks. So the PCs are juggling getting what they want without advancing the 'bad things happen'. Worse, if you crank your heat up too fast, when you do time (and doing time is assumed), it's SO much worse for you.
Also your ability to resist things is gated by stress, which is another resource players have that can be used to push themselves to do things better or to resist the consequences of bad things that happen. All balanced by the idea that if you get too much stress, you get traumatized. Suffer too much trauma, and rather than your character dying, they've just had too much of the risky life of adventuring and hang up their towel.
I really, really like the systems of Blades. I wish I was better at running it.
Diagnosed with AML on 6/1/12. Read about it: www.effleukemia.com
Blades entire reward economy is based around the player actively seeking the dumbest, most brazen way of doing something and then getting away with it.
This is tempered by the fact that it's a super lethal game where damage takes ages to heal and acting badly can make you feel like you're barely treading water.
Which is in turn tempered by the stress meter meaning a player can always reduce or void consequences they think are too harsh to weather.
It's a very neat system. Also if you want a more sci-fi bent: Hack The Planet plays 95% the same as Blades in the Dark and has some neat gang/tech variants due to the setting shift.
About the only downside to it as a system is that it's pretty bad at making equipment or other minor factors meaningful (because the scales from 0-6 full stop for rolls) and that it's very regimented structure might not be to everyone's taste.
Huh, Shadowrun 6th Edition has been officially announced. Coming out this summer, more details in the coming weeks. They promise it'll still be a crunchy system, but more streamlined than the current edition.
I was very into Shadowrun in college (tail end of 3rd edition), but less so for the rules (although they did a bunch of stuff that I'd never seen before, which was exciting) and more so for the setting background, the metaplot, and the in-character Shadowtalk sections in the rulebooks. I sorta kept up with all that during 4th Edition, but then missed a couple of the sourcebooks and lost all track of the metaplot by the time 5th edition came out. It seems like 5th edition made a whole lot of moves in terms of progressing the technology level and socio-political standings. I wish there was a thorough compilation somewhere of all the story and character beats from the last ~5 years or so, but I'd never been able to find anything of the sort.
Huh, Shadowrun 6th Edition has been officially announced. Coming out this summer, more details in the coming weeks. They promise it'll still be a crunchy system, but more streamlined than the current edition.
When I was looking through the rules for Shadowrun 5th edition, I realized that although I love the setting, I will never ever run or play a Shadowrun-by-the-rules game. There are just too many rules, too much granularity. I remember (ironically, as you will see) the exact moment when this dawned on me: I was reading the rule for the "Photographic Memory" quality, and it was talking about memory tests - if a character needs to remember something, they do a Memory Test, and the Photographic Memory quality gives them a bonus on that.
I understand why a rule system might want to introduce rules for memory. However, I simply do not have the time or the emotional space to accommodate something like that. I recognize that playing a game is necessarily an act of interpretation, and that not all rules make it to the table in their as-written form (or at all), but the fact that this rulebook considers this an important thing to model - something that needs to be codified in the rules - speaks volumes about the overall design philosophy. It's simply not something I, personally, can handle.
There's that Anarchy ruleset, which is supposed to be a narrative take on Shadowrun, but I haven't had time to look into it.
I have that! And I've only skimmed it, but not played. I'd be interested to hear experiences with it, but I don't really have the time to play anything right now.
It would just be play by post, and probably not updated more quickly than one post per day. I also only have the free version though I'm looking at the paid version because I hear it has some scenarios and other goodies.
Also the Anarchology podcast crew had him on and spent time talking about it.
In general it actually sounds pretty solid. The re-work to Edge basically makes it into momentum from Star Trek or Infinity. A lot of the changes sound like they're about making flatter, more meaningful numbers and making it more clear what the 'correct' skill is.
+1
Options
Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
Nice. I look forward to Shadowrun 6th.
PSN ID - Mostlyjoe Steam ID -TheNotoriusRNG
0
Options
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited May 2019
Having the dark heresy blog is weird in that, while not frequently in recent time, I often will rewrite or add big swathes of stuff that it makes me feel embarrassed that someone read the "bad" or incomplete version that I would basically type the foundation of up in a fit of boredom or inspiration then go back days or weeks later and add or fundamentally change it. Luckily a lot of the ones I change are lore stuff and not the adventures. Even formatting can drastically change like the overhaul's format. I'm also trying to make it look a lot less like patch notes and more like a supplemental rule set.
Sucks the blog's format is weird and shows stuff by month instead of a list like the one I see when I check it out as an editor.
admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
5E is six years old now so I think it's unfair to call it a cash churn. Otherwise I'd say the question is more, what do the designers and Shadowrun's fans think are the underlying issues of the game and do those line up with your interests?
One of the comments is that Hacking's being simplified. Marks are gone and more/maybe all (hard to tell because quick start rules) hacking rolls are now one roll to resolve.
One of the comments is that Hacking's being simplified. Marks are gone and more/maybe all (hard to tell because quick start rules) hacking rolls are now one roll to resolve.
Perfect that's all it should be, and I should be able to do it from my phone easy peasy. Honestly if you wanna see how hacking in shadowrun should look, watch arneson on leverage.
We're not looking to simulate boring hacking for hours, we just want a guy hackin all the things for the info control.
My underlying issue with Shadowrun is that for some reason a set of people (designers, marketing, various ranks of people who sign off on things) at Catalyst Game Labs thought it was a great idea to make the 30th anniversary Shadowrun logo look like the neon sign for the sleaziest adult club you can imagine.
To some degree, it might fit the Shadowrun of the 2050s, but I don't think it matches the aesthetic of 2080s Shadowrun even as a stretch. I'm curious how many people will actually wear those shirts and hoodies.
One of the comments is that Hacking's being simplified. Marks are gone and more/maybe all (hard to tell because quick start rules) hacking rolls are now one roll to resolve.
Perfect that's all it should be, and I should be able to do it from my phone easy peasy. Honestly if you wanna see how hacking in shadowrun should look, watch arneson on leverage.
We're not looking to simulate boring hacking for hours, we just want a guy hackin all the things for the info control.
Yup you can describe it as technojargon as you want but I am trying to hack this monitor just roll your hacking check is the right way to handle that.
I genuinely don't know if I want Shadowrun 6e. Are they going to actually address the game's underlying issues? Or is this just another cash churn?
What do you consider to be the underlying issues? Am I correct in remembering that you do not like Dice Pool systems?
Not ignoring the other questions related to this, just answering once (hopefully).
The bottom line is the game has a tendency to play like ass. This is a tendency it shares with a lot of heavy crunch games that don't have intuitive subsystems. But for Shadowrun it's largely the endless list of situational modifiers to rolls that intensely matter but also make every roll an exercise in bookkeeping.
It also has outstanding issues with leaning on legacy rather than simply accepting most Matrix work is just going to come down to executing scripts you've already written rather than spending time manually breaking through ICE, black or otherwise. Back in the 80s, yeah, it totally made sense as an archetype. Now, especially with wireless access to most networks, you either have someone on site with a different (more martial) skill set running scripts prepared for the job or, you know, simply creating/enabling a link for a remote intruder to enter the local network nodes. I've read that they're looking for ways to trim hacking down, which is good; hacking could easily generate the most rolls in a session for no apparent reason other than because rolling dice a lot makes you feel like you're doing something.
Yes, the game's roots are cyberpunk, but at this point that's manifest more in the corporate kleptocracy system of governance the (game) world labors under than modern wireless technology enabling a hacking culture completely disconnected (no pun intended) from the posited cyberpunks of the 80s. Besides, the game's killer app...what makes it different from competitors is magic. So they should lean into that, emphasizing it and minimizing the Matrix stuff. But I don't mean adding more rolls to magic (whew, bullet dodged). Just expend more writing attention on the various magical practices than writing up network nodes and agents. Shift the role to a secondary one; something the Face or Rigger probably also handles in most teams.
I don't mind dice pools. I don't particularly enjoy massive dice pools, only because at that point you're essentially just obscuring lazy math underlying the system rather than, you know, designing an efficient core mechanic for players to engage with. With some irony, Onyx Path's moves to limit dice pools to ~20 dice is a move in the right direction, although I'd personally consider 10-15 a better "desired range," with automatic successes driving most rolls.
Beginning to wander a bit here, so I'll pause and let people tell me why I'm wrong.
They touched a bit on some of this on the episode of The Arcology Podcast that came out alongside the announcement. It sounds like for combat, at least, they are trying to standardize the situational bonuses and have a uniform system for it, revolving around the Edge system. Certain well-defined combat situations give you Edge (having a higher attack rating than your opponent has defense rating; being within a certain range of your target; I think they also mentioned having higher ground). Edge gain is at most +2 per turn, and you can hold a max of 7 at a time. You can then spend Edge on your attack to do stuff like make your opponent have glitches on 2s as well as 1s, or give you roll a +1 (I assume this means to one die in your die pool, because you can spend multiple Edge to gain multiple +1s on a turn). Sounds like they expect you to be gaining and spending Edge all the time.
This still sounds like a lot of bookkeeping to me, and still sounds like it'll make combat take a long-ass time to resolve, but at least it seems like a more standardized system.
Oh, and that the Edge system is extended to all kinds of interactions, so you can gain/spend Edge when you're trying to bluff your way past a guard or hack through a network.
A standardized (and hopefully streamlined) list of situational bonuses makes a big difference in time just because you don't have to think about it. Or look it up.
Posts
PC rolls failure or success-with-consequence.
GM narratively describes what’s going to happen to the PC and any mechanical effects of it.
PC decides whether or not they want to resist the consequence, if they do the consequence doesn’t happen and you rewrite the narrative.
GM: You encounter this setback.
Player: I want to do this to overcome this setback. I want to use this skill to do that.
GM: I feel like if you used this other skill to do that you could get better Effect, but you can use that skill for Limited Effect. Either way, it's Risky Difficulty.
Player: I know it would be greater Effect if I used that other skill, but I have less dice in that skill. I'm going to roll my first skill choice for Limited Risky.
GM: Do you want to push yourself for an extra die?
Player: No.
GM: I have a Devil's Bargain for you if you want.
Player: Okay.
GM: Here is the Devil's Bargain, go ahead and roll an extra die.
Player: I rolled a 4 and a 3.
GM: Okay so now I describe a number of possible consequences for you to choose from.
Player: I will choose the option where I can try again with a different skill but from a Desperate position.
GM: Okay are you going to push yourself or do you want a Devil's Bargain?
Player: I will push myself for another die. My roll is a 1, 3, and 3. Wow that sucks.
GM: Wow that does suck. Okay you lose your equipment you were using and take a level 2 harm. I'm also going to advance this clock.
Player: I want to resist that.
GM: Which of those do you want to resist? The level 2 harm, losing your weapon, and advancing the clock will all be separate resistance rolls.
Player: Let me roll to resist the level 2 harm first.
GM: Okay but narratively speaking I don't think you can avoid it completely. It will reduce to a level 1 harm.
Player: I understand. Okay, I rolled a 5.
GM: Alright, how's your stress looking? Do you want to roll another resistance roll?
Player: Sure, let's go for losing my weapon next. I rolled a 2.
GM: Do you want to roll to resist the clock now?
Player: No, my stress is pretty high up and besides, I'd like to see what happens when that clock triggers.
That's an exchange between a player and a GM for one single test. It would take an eternity to do in a Play-by-Post setting, unless it was like "we are playing by post from these hours on this day this week, please be refreshing your pages constantly during this time" in which case it'd be easier to play through text in like, IRC or whatever.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I haven't run it yet, but as far as playing it goes, it's not that hard from a purely mechanical perspective. What's difficult is that its explicitly a narrative-driven game that relies on back and forth between players and game master, all of whom are working together to generate what an interesting story. Getting into the proper rhythm takes a bit getting used to.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It really really really isn't. It is somewhat "hard" to run in that it plays very differently from RPGs most of us learned on. Once you get the different mindset though you basically just roll with the players and let them screw up their situation to hilarious results.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
My favorite piece of the advice was: Steal from Ian Fleming, and introduce the villain to James Bond/the players in a setting where violence would not go down well, like at a soirée or a casino. You can show the villain being an intimidating hard-ass, but they are not physically threatening the players, and the players are less likely to start a physical altercation at the poker table. And if they do, there's ample narrative justification for the arch-villain getting away and the players being detained by third-party security/other guests/etc.
Blades also has a pretty big subsystem about how dropping bodies is bad. That's tied into the setting but is a pretty good way of nudging things away from murder hobo style.
Does that mean the space marine's player has to roll a new character for the adventure, or...? Just curious.
I did introduce the archvillain without a fight in the Ian Flemming way, though. I've been calling them as a wimpy high-strung businessman that the archvillain has been acting as. He got another guy to play the part and met them in a Batman (1989)-esque meeting in an art cafe to basically hold them captive for a bit while the rest of the folks were gassed asleep. He brought along daemonic constructs so no one would lift a hand, slammed into the place with an eighteen-wheeler basically, performed a ritual so the place was shrouded in blackness except for a single ethereal candle at the table he gathered them all at, and the place wouldn't allow weapons except those of noble office like a power sword or omnissian axe so they were mainly unarmed with their broken stuff. That went super well and is one of my favorite performances and things I ever did while giving a lot of information pretty naturally.
The issue is I want the stuff to feel real to these folks and the next character I invested a lot of time and thought on didn't really pay off. I assume that's because I mainly told them stuff he did or had him interact with them but only as other characters. I have been told by this thread they must be mechanically engaged if I want to give them a really memorable experience.
The space marine is an NPC. They can burn influence to get him along for adventures. They play as normal humans in Dark Heresy. The players can play him but he is an NPC and I made him. He's there to hunt the traitor of his chapter as a kill-marine essentially, but can be "hired" with expending influence to further his search for the traitor.
I was reading that. Killing folks is a VERY fast way to crank up your heat meter and a lot of "bad thing" clocks. So the PCs are juggling getting what they want without advancing the 'bad things happen'. Worse, if you crank your heat up too fast, when you do time (and doing time is assumed), it's SO much worse for you.
Also your ability to resist things is gated by stress, which is another resource players have that can be used to push themselves to do things better or to resist the consequences of bad things that happen. All balanced by the idea that if you get too much stress, you get traumatized. Suffer too much trauma, and rather than your character dying, they've just had too much of the risky life of adventuring and hang up their towel.
I really, really like the systems of Blades. I wish I was better at running it.
And getting at least one trauma isn't all bad, because roleplaying whatever status you've chosen is another avenue to obtain xp
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
This is tempered by the fact that it's a super lethal game where damage takes ages to heal and acting badly can make you feel like you're barely treading water.
Which is in turn tempered by the stress meter meaning a player can always reduce or void consequences they think are too harsh to weather.
It's a very neat system. Also if you want a more sci-fi bent: Hack The Planet plays 95% the same as Blades in the Dark and has some neat gang/tech variants due to the setting shift.
About the only downside to it as a system is that it's pretty bad at making equipment or other minor factors meaningful (because the scales from 0-6 full stop for rolls) and that it's very regimented structure might not be to everyone's taste.
I was very into Shadowrun in college (tail end of 3rd edition), but less so for the rules (although they did a bunch of stuff that I'd never seen before, which was exciting) and more so for the setting background, the metaplot, and the in-character Shadowtalk sections in the rulebooks. I sorta kept up with all that during 4th Edition, but then missed a couple of the sourcebooks and lost all track of the metaplot by the time 5th edition came out. It seems like 5th edition made a whole lot of moves in terms of progressing the technology level and socio-political standings. I wish there was a thorough compilation somewhere of all the story and character beats from the last ~5 years or so, but I'd never been able to find anything of the sort.
Don't they say this every edition?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
When I was looking through the rules for Shadowrun 5th edition, I realized that although I love the setting, I will never ever run or play a Shadowrun-by-the-rules game. There are just too many rules, too much granularity. I remember (ironically, as you will see) the exact moment when this dawned on me: I was reading the rule for the "Photographic Memory" quality, and it was talking about memory tests - if a character needs to remember something, they do a Memory Test, and the Photographic Memory quality gives them a bonus on that.
I understand why a rule system might want to introduce rules for memory. However, I simply do not have the time or the emotional space to accommodate something like that. I recognize that playing a game is necessarily an act of interpretation, and that not all rules make it to the table in their as-written form (or at all), but the fact that this rulebook considers this an important thing to model - something that needs to be codified in the rules - speaks volumes about the overall design philosophy. It's simply not something I, personally, can handle.
There's that Anarchy ruleset, which is supposed to be a narrative take on Shadowrun, but I haven't had time to look into it.
Also the Anarchology podcast crew had him on and spent time talking about it.
In general it actually sounds pretty solid. The re-work to Edge basically makes it into momentum from Star Trek or Infinity. A lot of the changes sound like they're about making flatter, more meaningful numbers and making it more clear what the 'correct' skill is.
Sucks the blog's format is weird and shows stuff by month instead of a list like the one I see when I check it out as an editor.
That and this one is sounding more like a system people can actually play.
Perfect that's all it should be, and I should be able to do it from my phone easy peasy. Honestly if you wanna see how hacking in shadowrun should look, watch arneson on leverage.
We're not looking to simulate boring hacking for hours, we just want a guy hackin all the things for the info control.
To some degree, it might fit the Shadowrun of the 2050s, but I don't think it matches the aesthetic of 2080s Shadowrun even as a stretch. I'm curious how many people will actually wear those shirts and hoodies.
Yup you can describe it as technojargon as you want but I am trying to hack this monitor just roll your hacking check is the right way to handle that.
The bottom line is the game has a tendency to play like ass. This is a tendency it shares with a lot of heavy crunch games that don't have intuitive subsystems. But for Shadowrun it's largely the endless list of situational modifiers to rolls that intensely matter but also make every roll an exercise in bookkeeping.
It also has outstanding issues with leaning on legacy rather than simply accepting most Matrix work is just going to come down to executing scripts you've already written rather than spending time manually breaking through ICE, black or otherwise. Back in the 80s, yeah, it totally made sense as an archetype. Now, especially with wireless access to most networks, you either have someone on site with a different (more martial) skill set running scripts prepared for the job or, you know, simply creating/enabling a link for a remote intruder to enter the local network nodes. I've read that they're looking for ways to trim hacking down, which is good; hacking could easily generate the most rolls in a session for no apparent reason other than because rolling dice a lot makes you feel like you're doing something.
Yes, the game's roots are cyberpunk, but at this point that's manifest more in the corporate kleptocracy system of governance the (game) world labors under than modern wireless technology enabling a hacking culture completely disconnected (no pun intended) from the posited cyberpunks of the 80s. Besides, the game's killer app...what makes it different from competitors is magic. So they should lean into that, emphasizing it and minimizing the Matrix stuff. But I don't mean adding more rolls to magic (whew, bullet dodged). Just expend more writing attention on the various magical practices than writing up network nodes and agents. Shift the role to a secondary one; something the Face or Rigger probably also handles in most teams.
I don't mind dice pools. I don't particularly enjoy massive dice pools, only because at that point you're essentially just obscuring lazy math underlying the system rather than, you know, designing an efficient core mechanic for players to engage with. With some irony, Onyx Path's moves to limit dice pools to ~20 dice is a move in the right direction, although I'd personally consider 10-15 a better "desired range," with automatic successes driving most rolls.
Beginning to wander a bit here, so I'll pause and let people tell me why I'm wrong.
This still sounds like a lot of bookkeeping to me, and still sounds like it'll make combat take a long-ass time to resolve, but at least it seems like a more standardized system.