i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
I have a villain who speaks in a creepy singsong voice whose backstory is that they are the victim of flaying and now wear a specialized body-conforming suit of metal armour that stops her from feeling pain and has machine parts built into her that is connected to the armour. She now can't feel anything anymore so she tortures others to hear them scream. Their specialty is sedation, machine disruption, and interrogation.
Do I call her Iron Maiden or Anasthesia?
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
These are good points. And it isn't right of me to just stomp in here and lay out stuff without engaging in the discourse fairly. I guess I'm projecting onto the discussion, given that this will be my 20th year of following Shadowrun from both sides of the player/developer divide. I've also got a bit of pent-up concern given how much (seeming) hatred was flung at D&D 5th edition around here, and yet it seems that game turned out okay.
I would take a slight twist on one aspect, though. While Shadowrun can be a heist game, it is a character drama at its core. I have very little interest in the breaking and entering, stealing goods, and having a shootout aspects of the game. I care far more about the repercussions of those actions: what it means to be seen as disposable property, not truly a member of the society that surrounds it. To feel ground down to the marrow, othered, and tossed out. If you are a mage in my game, hopefully I'm going to let you experience what it means to be part of 1% of the population that is both feared and idolized at the same time. But again, that's my take on the game. The mechanics help me drive that in this case. But I stand by my greatest achievement being running a convention session of Shadowrun without ever rolling dice. That's what I get out of the mohawk vs. trenchcoat debate: How does your character react to a world that does not care about your soul, except as a statistic?
I have a villain who speaks in a creepy singsong voice whose backstory is that they are the victim of flaying and now wear a specialized body-conforming suit of metal armour that stops her from feeling pain and has machine parts built into her that is connected to the armour. She now can't feel anything anymore so she tortures others to hear them scream. Their specialty is sedation, machine disruption, and interrogation.
Do I call her Iron Maiden or Anasthesia?
Anaesthesia, my friends call me Ann. You can call me *shriek of pain*
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
These are good points. And it isn't right of me to just stomp in here and lay out stuff without engaging in the discourse fairly. I guess I'm projecting onto the discussion, given that this will be my 20th year of following Shadowrun from both sides of the player/developer divide. I've also got a bit of pent-up concern given how much (seeming) hatred was flung at D&D 5th edition around here, and yet it seems that game turned out okay.
I would take a slight twist on one aspect, though. While Shadowrun can be a heist game, it is a character drama at its core. I have very little interest in the breaking and entering, stealing goods, and having a shootout aspects of the game. I care far more about the repercussions of those actions: what it means to be seen as disposable property, not truly a member of the society that surrounds it. To feel ground down to the marrow, othered, and tossed out. If you are a mage in my game, hopefully I'm going to let you experience what it means to be part of 1% of the population that is both feared and idolized at the same time. But again, that's my take on the game. The mechanics help me drive that in this case. But I stand by my greatest achievement being running a convention session of Shadowrun without ever rolling dice. That's what I get out of the mohawk vs. trenchcoat debate: How does your character react to a world that does not care about your soul, except as a statistic?
Blah. Again, I'm sorry for barging in here. =/
You should maybe check out Blades in the Dark if you haven't already!
I don't think you need to apologize for anything. We're all having a discussion that I personally am finding very interesting and informative, you're contributing your thoughts and perspectives (which explore other people's thoughts and perspectives, and which other people explore in turn), and it's all even going along very civilly! Success, high-fives all around, we're doing a good job.
I would take a slight twist on one aspect, though. While Shadowrun can be a heist game, it is a character drama at its core. I have very little interest in the breaking and entering, stealing goods, and having a shootout aspects of the game. I care far more about the repercussions of those actions: what it means to be seen as disposable property, not truly a member of the society that surrounds it. To feel ground down to the marrow, othered, and tossed out. If you are a mage in my game, hopefully I'm going to let you experience what it means to be part of 1% of the population that is both feared and idolized at the same time. But again, that's my take on the game. The mechanics help me drive that in this case.
Would you mind elaborating on this a little bit? In what way do the mechanics drive this? And, maybe more to the point, which mechanics do you feel drive this? For example, I can see how very lethal rules ("In combat, roll a d20. On a 20, you survive; otherwise you die!") would create a mood of caution, negotiation, clever planning, and avoiding combat at all costs; at the same time, I can see how a game where any corner street preacher can cast Resurrection for a fee of 1gp would create a mood of charging into the fray, taking risks, and so on.
What about Shadowrun's mechanics do you feel help create the atmosphere of disenfranchisement? If I had to guess, it wouldn't be the rule about how many bonus initiative passes you get in combat if you have Wired Reflexes 4 or whatever, or how many gigs of data your cybereye camera can store; rather, it might be the rule about how an inconspicuous cyberarm isn't actually affordable, or something along those lines.
Follow-up question: Do you think the game-feel you're looking for would suffer if you chopped out or simplified the mechanics that aren't actively contributing to the mood you're looking for?
(Idle musing: affordable inconspicuous cyberarms are only really relevant in a setting where having obvious chrome is going to bring social trouble down on your head. It has less to do with the actual mechanics and more with the settings design, although I'd say that "affordability and availability of inconspicuous cyberlimbs" is at least 50% a mechanics thing.)
But I stand by my greatest achievement being running a convention session of Shadowrun without ever rolling dice.
If you were able to have this great experience with the game where not a single die was rolled, I have to wonder: are the game mechanics actually serving you in any way?
All of this musing is coming from the same place, an eye-opening lesson that the fine folks on this forum taught me over the years: A game has mechanics because it is attempting to create a certain kind of experience; if the experience that you are looking for is not one that's created by those mechanics, then perhaps you might be better served by picking a game that more closely caters to the experience you want.
if you presented me with the mission to design a meta-currency and the name, Edge, well, i can tell you what it wouldn't be from me, which is a generator of static bonuses / penalties. i'd probably tie it directly into getting and rewarding the genre moments people come to expect and desire from shadowrun; that is, edge allows you to prepare for anything. it allows you to do cinematic gun fu. it allows you to infiltrate with style (whether that style is black trenchcoat or purple mohawk is up to the group)
This really makes a lot of sense to me. One of my favorite Moves in "The Sprawl" (a PbtA cyberpunk going-on-illegal-missions game; very very much the mission-oriented aspect of Shadowrun, but with a more conventional no-magic cyberpunk setting) is this:
DECLARE A CONTACT
When you need to call in a favour from a new contact, name and describe the Contact, then say why the Contact owes you a favour or why you owe them a favour. The MC will ask you some questions about the Contact and your relationship. Add the Contact to your list.
This suuuuuuuuper worked for me, because it immediately made me think of those moments in heist movies where a complication comes up and ugh now the plan might not work out, and then one character looks up with a smirk and a twinkle in their eye and says "I think I know a guy". My understanding is that PbtA games are primarily about evoking the feel of genre fiction, and this is a very emblematic genre moment. This one rule kind of made me understand game design better because of the immediate emotional reaction it created in me when I read it.
The Sprawl is one of my favorite games that I’ve not played yet to my great shame and that move is sooo good
PBtA games are still shattering and breaking ground with how they cut to the bone of generating meaty, satisfying gameplay experiences that feels consistent and reproducible
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
These are good points. And it isn't right of me to just stomp in here and lay out stuff without engaging in the discourse fairly. I guess I'm projecting onto the discussion, given that this will be my 20th year of following Shadowrun from both sides of the player/developer divide. I've also got a bit of pent-up concern given how much (seeming) hatred was flung at D&D 5th edition around here, and yet it seems that game turned out okay.
I would take a slight twist on one aspect, though. While Shadowrun can be a heist game, it is a character drama at its core. I have very little interest in the breaking and entering, stealing goods, and having a shootout aspects of the game. I care far more about the repercussions of those actions: what it means to be seen as disposable property, not truly a member of the society that surrounds it. To feel ground down to the marrow, othered, and tossed out. If you are a mage in my game, hopefully I'm going to let you experience what it means to be part of 1% of the population that is both feared and idolized at the same time. But again, that's my take on the game. The mechanics help me drive that in this case. But I stand by my greatest achievement being running a convention session of Shadowrun without ever rolling dice. That's what I get out of the mohawk vs. trenchcoat debate: How does your character react to a world that does not care about your soul, except as a statistic?
Blah. Again, I'm sorry for barging in here. =/
also for what it's worth I agree with Delduwath here, I don't think you barged in unfairly (the only part I took very minor umbrage with was the assumption of tone and that's not a big thing!)
i freely admit i was one of the vocal detractors of D&D5 here, and then I played it and now it's the cornerstone of my longest campaign to date
and I think the statement you provided about having not rolled any dice echoes Adam Koebel's sentiments about abandoning a game when it's no longer servicing your mission statement --
(as an aside Office Hours is a great show and everyone should watch that has even a passing interest in game design/GMing from a designer perspective)
I think everything you point to is something that D&D struggles with, too--so many groups say "the best sessions I've played are ones where the dice don't come out", and it's an uncomfortable thing to be confronted with the idea that at that point, you aren't actually playing the game anymore; you're still telling your campaign story, but at that point it really is improvisational acting... and there's nothing wrong with that, but I think we're doing ourselves a disservice by not asking ourselves if there's an option that would not only serve our story, but also enhance it.
i think it leans way more towards Android/Blade Runner than Shadowrun, but honestly you could lay a flavor of magic/the supernatural on top of it REALLY easy and it wouldn't change all that much. there are other urban fantasy PBTA games out there that could work as inspiration (such as Urban Shadows).
to swing this back around, I hope Catalyst sees this as an opportunity to bring Shadowrun into the pool of modern game design. 5th did this in a lot of ways (regressed in some others) and it's now revitalized the D&D brand to heights of popularity even greater than 3.5 did. Shadowrun could be that next thing... if it wants to.
or it could slavishly adhere to the design precepts of 10+ years ago in the name of pleasing the very vocal minority of hardcores. i won't pontificate overmuch on whether that's a good or bad decision.
Friends at the Table moved their anime-inspired cyberpunk campaign (COUNTER//Weight) from MechNoir to The Sprawl. Of course, they're well into "will make anything sound good" territory as a playgroup, and their main jam being Dungeon World makes it an easy fit, but it really does seem solid and flavorful.
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
edited May 2019
I want to write up a good reply to this (especially Delduwath's points), but I'm at work and my mind is bouncing between a few things, so I'll just comment on a couple things.
I personally have a longer history of freeform roleplaying online than all but 1 campaign in the pen and paper area, so I'm comfortable diceless. But you are right - coming from a storytelling aspect, it's pretty easy to slip out of the rules and that kind of drops the definition of a game.
I do not know how Shadowrun: Anarchy was received. Bull and Jason were going to run a game of it for our group, but that kind of fell through and I haven't looked at it in detail. Each SR Line dev ( Jordan Weisman, Tom Dowd, Michael Mulvahill, Rob Boyle, and Jason Hardy -- I'm sure I've missed one or two) all have different views on this stuff, and the only one I've talked in depth about the subject with was Mulvahill back in 2000. At the time, 3rd had just come out. Mike basically said that it's a foregone conclusion that you are going to not please everyone with a new edition, to the point where you can lose up to 1/3 of your previous player base. I don't know if Shadowrun tabletop was able to ride the coattails of Shadowrun Returns enough to build momentum, so I do not know what the player base looks like right now in terms of health. I'm willing to bet the systems are doing the game more harm than good though, hence the experiment with Anarchy.
Shadowrun, from a mechanical sense, came from the same mind that birthed Battletech, Crimson Skies, and Mage Knight / Heroclix. Many people associate Shadowrun with "HandfulD6", and if you go to other systems, you might as well play d20 modern or something. I don't personally ascribe to that, but I will say that Shadowrun, D20 Modern, and Shadow of the Beanstalk all have very different feels based on what aspect of the future dystopia they want to focus on. But.. yeah. As much as I'd love to see a clean break, I am not sure if Topps would be okay with that.
I should also note I've never played the OG Cyberpunk in any capacity, hence my not commenting on it.
i think [The Sprawl] leans way more towards Android/Blade Runner than Shadowrun, but honestly you could lay a flavor of magic/the supernatural on top of it REALLY easy and it wouldn't change all that much. there are other urban fantasy PBTA games out there that could work as inspiration (such as Urban Shadows).
In fact, there's a hack - very imaginatively called "Shadowrun in the Sprawl" - that does exactly this (I don't think there's a site for it; far as I can tell it exists only as a Google Doc). From what I understand, The Sprawl tends to focus on the mission aspect of Shadowrun (do the legwork, go on the run, do the legwork, go on the run, etc), and doesn't really provide mechanics for downtime and stuff like that, so "Shadowrun in the Sprawl" would follow suit. This may not be exactly what you want, or maybe it's exactly what you want: rules for when you need to do the run, freeform diceless improv theater for when you want to do downtime character exploration pieces.
I came upon this Reddit post where the creator of "Shadowrun in the Sprawl" discusses how "The Sprawl" and "Blades in the Dark" differ from each other (despite both being roughly in the "heist" genre of game), how the differences would serve a Shadowrun hack, and also briefly discusses two different Shadowrun-flavored Blades in the Dark hacks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/8gepsq/shadowrun_hacks_shadowrun_in_the_sprawl_vs_karma/dyc1wk0/
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
I have definitely run a lot of heists in Shadowrun. But I've also done a lot of other stuff like track down rampaging bug spirits in Detroit, fought a dragon in Brazil, traded corporate calling cards in Hong Kong. Shadowrun is a bit more broad than "long shadows, deep pockets, and dirty deals providing backdrop." (Also if anyone else actually read that in the original, kudos to you, you're also old.)
I keep getting irritated with CGL because they constantly lose the thread on why the broadest cross-section of people want to play Shadowrun. Which is the setting. Which is unique in being urban fantasy set in the near future. That's the core thesis of why so many people would like to play Shadowrun if they could get past the mechanics. SR5 felt like a game from 2009 which, given that it came out in 2013, wasn't the worst outcome for a corporate property. But it also came so close on the heels of SR4 and offered so little that represented a clear mechanical improvement, people sort of stopped caring. 6e is definitely in danger of that if all it offers is more complexity and additional systems under the guise of "simplification."
There are better options for literally every part of Shadowrun except near future urban fantasy (also, hi, if anyone's reading this who wants to try to hit a niche in the hobby, there's one). The single most correlated search for Shadowrun? "Alternatives." That says things about the game that our criticism never possibly could.
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
I have definitely run a lot of heists in Shadowrun. But I've also done a lot of other stuff like track down rampaging bug spirits in Detroit, fought a dragon in Brazil, traded corporate calling cards in Hong Kong. Shadowrun is a bit more broad than "long shadows, deep pockets, and dirty deals providing backdrop." (Also if anyone else actually read that in the original, kudos to you, you're also old.)
I keep getting irritated with CGL because they constantly lose the thread on why the broadest cross-section of people want to play Shadowrun. Which is the setting. Which is unique in being urban fantasy set in the near future. That's the core thesis of why so many people would like to play Shadowrun if they could get past the mechanics. SR5 felt like a game from 2009 which, given that it came out in 2013, wasn't the worst outcome for a corporate property. But it also came so close on the heels of SR4 and offered so little that represented a clear mechanical improvement, people sort of stopped caring. 6e is definitely in danger of that if all it offers is more complexity and additional systems under the guise of "simplification."
There are better options for literally every part of Shadowrun except near future urban fantasy (also, hi, if anyone's reading this who wants to try to hit a niche in the hobby, there's one). The single most correlated search for Shadowrun? "Alternatives." That says things about the game that our criticism never possibly could.
When huge swathes of your audience wants to play your setting but doesn't want to touch your game, you need to get real.
agree completely, when i talk about the heist tropes that just seems to be the most common sort of setup. both of the PC games do a lot around the “infiltrate and steal paydata” structure.
it’s not all of it for sure but it feels like the “staple” like killing goblins is the “staple” of baby D&D
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
I have definitely run a lot of heists in Shadowrun. But I've also done a lot of other stuff like track down rampaging bug spirits in Detroit, fought a dragon in Brazil, traded corporate calling cards in Hong Kong. Shadowrun is a bit more broad than "long shadows, deep pockets, and dirty deals providing backdrop." (Also if anyone else actually read that in the original, kudos to you, you're also old.)
I keep getting irritated with CGL because they constantly lose the thread on why the broadest cross-section of people want to play Shadowrun. Which is the setting. Which is unique in being urban fantasy set in the near future. That's the core thesis of why so many people would like to play Shadowrun if they could get past the mechanics. SR5 felt like a game from 2009 which, given that it came out in 2013, wasn't the worst outcome for a corporate property. But it also came so close on the heels of SR4 and offered so little that represented a clear mechanical improvement, people sort of stopped caring. 6e is definitely in danger of that if all it offers is more complexity and additional systems under the guise of "simplification."
There are better options for literally every part of Shadowrun except near future urban fantasy (also, hi, if anyone's reading this who wants to try to hit a niche in the hobby, there's one). The single most correlated search for Shadowrun? "Alternatives." That says things about the game that our criticism never possibly could.
When huge swathes of your audience wants to play your setting but doesn't want to touch your game, you need to get real.
agree completely, when i talk about the heist tropes that just seems to be the most common sort of setup. both of the PC games do a lot around the “infiltrate and steal paydata” structure.
it’s not all of it for sure but it feels like the “staple” like killing goblins is the “staple” of baby D&D
Sure, but I think there's a lot more to Shadowrun than just the semi-titular "runs" for corporate paydata. There's corporate espionage and then there's corporate espionage. Right?
I think runs are similar to dungeon crawls. They're a reasonable but comically underexpressive shorthand for what the game is capable of. I think if we're going to talk about why people want to engage with the setting it's important not to ignore the fact that "like D&D, but with flying cars, corporate sociopolitical ascendancy, in an unexplored and largely new but familiar world" is an excellent elevator pitch. (I generally do not appreciate the lore post 2060, a/k/a the starting point for 3e.)
To somewhat sidetrack your topic folks, you know how in high fantasy you’re expected to delve into dungeons and traverse the wilderness, but at some point you’ll always snoop in a city and hop into a portal across the planes, yeah?
Have there every been resources for you to be in somewhere other than a city in Shadowrun?
I’ve never played it, but I’m intrigued to know how they handle nature, and since it’s D&D but cyberpunk, do they have their own outer planes? Are there nightcore trap remix elementals? Do bad robots go to Android Hell?
Some. Wilderness areas and dead cities and such are discussed in the supplements, and there are a few adventures designed for them. But wildernesses are incredibly dangerous. Some are full of angry spirits, some are full of angry natives, some are full of angry paranimals, and some have all of those problems.
Having people go into the Chicago Dead Zone to recover corp data is something a lot of the UCAS-set campaigns do. Which is kind of like that but more cthulhu.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
I had my first completed Call of Cthuhlu one-shot.
I played a thug called Sol Demsky with a bad Mickey Rourke impression.
A big dumb lovable gangster.
Stomped a bunch of big spiders.
Had to make a deal with a big talky spider.
Drowned a man.
Then super drowned a man with a weird water golem/crossroads demon type thing.
Started burning down a mansion to the tune of "Another Saturday Night" because it's 1967.
Shrilly screamed and ran when a painting ghost came to life and I made off with my canvass bag of goods.
My friend, who I believe did GMing the first time tonight, made a very good adventure and was great at GMing.
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Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
edited June 2019
So Scion 2E drops and the reviews are mixed.
Nice concepts, system feels weird with how it handles stats, etc. Organization in the book is a mess. Doesn't feel up to classic OP quality. Whatever that means.
Scion was ...bad. 1E's use of Exalted mechanics without the guiderails of keywords, etc was just a mess. Anything that fixes that is an improvement. But so far they haven't really sold me on 2E yet.
In other news FINALLY got Stars Without Number Revised hardcopy on the way.
Also, if I wanted to run CoC but in the modern era, what books would I need?
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Nice concepts, system feels weird with how it handles stats, etc. Organization in the book is a mess. Doesn't feel up to classic OP quality. Whatever that means.
Scion was ...bad. 1E's use of Exalted mechanics without the guiderails of keywords, etc was just a mess. Anything that fixes that is an improvement. But so far they haven't really sold me on 2E yet.
In other news FINALLY got Stars Without Number Revised hardcopy on the way.
Also, if I wanted to run CoC but in the modern era, what books would I need?
The newest edition of CoC looks to have you covered from what I've seen in the core rulebook. They straight up have parallel 20s and modern stuff but there is more emphasis on the 20s stuff.
Also writing the final adventure to the second act of my series of campaigns. I have like a lot. It will get easier once I get past the middle since the third act is basically just a big action climax starting with a halo jump into an ethereal stormy sky because if you attempted to teleport through it you would end up in a senseless maddening city of daemons built upon the congealing banal essence of a dead god to land on an island with an ancient alien temple within an inactive volcano. I've also got five pages explaining why this climax adventure basically is how it is because it relies on having done a minimum of like five adventures I wrote and played through and possibly all 11 if I count the first act (not counting the total of 8 from the second act). I'm going to be posting it on the blog hence the need for compiling.
Does anyone want to play a casual game of Dungeon World right here?
I’m calling it Storm March. Think prospectors and archaeologists, but you’re loveable rogues that ride giant bats over flying islands and fight monsters.
I’m going to set up a new recruitment thread on Saturday (that will become your thread for all your adventures), and we’ll start a couple days after once we’ve worked together to make your characters and I’ve answered any queries you’ve got.
All are welcome, zero experience required!
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
Does anyone what to play a casual game of Dungeon World right here?
I’m calling it Storm March. Think prospectors and archaeologists, but you’re loveable rogues that ride giant bats over flying islands and fight monsters.
I’m going to set up a new recruitment thread on Saturday (that will become your thread for all your adventures), and we’ll start a couple days after once we’ve worked together to make your characters and I’ve answered any queries you’ve got.
All are welcome, zero experience required!
As a current player, I heartily encourage anyone that's interested and has time (not much required!) to jump in!
So...I just quit a game of Changeling: the Lost (and, effectively, the group as well) and wanted to solicit some thoughts from people.
The first of these was the phenomenon of forced interaction with other PCs. A big part of my decision to leave was that one of the players consistently plays a sort of "manic pixie" character that will do things like throw drinks at authority figures or "innocently" cause horrible accidents or other misfortunes for the group (i.e. what happens if I open the thing everyone said not to open? Oh, they're guarding it so I can't have it? I'll focus all of my energy on stealing it. Tee hee!"). I'd already played in a campaign with this person and was sick of the schtick with her previous character. In hindsight, I realize I was fortunate the first time around as the GM didn't let her hog the spotlight too much and tried to incorporate her "mischief" into ways to keep the plot going. What got me thinking, though, is that isn't this behaviour a form of metagaming, in that you know your character is automatically in the group with the other PCs by dint of your participation and so they cannot react in the way they would if you were an NPC?
The second thought is around player agency. The GM in this case started with the trope of "scary evil supernatural big bad summons you all and compels you to do their bidding", and essentially the whole campaign focused on doing chores for the scary big bad. The GM essentially forced everyone into a Motley oath on first meeting (again, supernatural compulsion to work with the group). Since this was mostly supernatural/occult stuff and my character is more socially-oriented with Resources, my contribution to most games is driving people places and buying them things. I'd often sit in Discord for hours and have no involvement with the game, or even an opportunity to get involved. I was leaving every game pissed off and it got to the point where my wife would get me to go take the dog for a walk to blow off steam because I was visibly irritated. This culminated in last night's game, where the manic pixie gleefully went to help the big bad (an authority figure she ostensibly hates and has tried to provoke many times) sabotage the electrical grid so that the GM could narrate the big bad and her cronies gratuitously running amok for no discernible reason. I wound up sending him an email saying that I could tolerate one of these terrible tropes but not both, and that I quit.
most problems of this nature need to be solved before game time and with a Real Honest Conversation
no one can blame you for dropping that shit because it sounds like a rough time, but the explosive temper flare ups could have been avoided, the game maybe salvaged, if there had been some open and honest communication between all the humans.
rpgs are a conversation and a gaming group is a set of “serious” relationships, and relationships are made healthy by good communication and consideration
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I don't know what you're looking for but either of those on its own would be enough for me to quit any game that didn't have some major redeeming value. It doesn't sound like this is a group you know outside of the game so there's not much value in trying to talk to them about it.
I don't personally treat "metagaming" as a bad word in RPGs. I often operate in Director stance as both player and GM so metagaming is just playing to me, but this player is depending on an implied social contract to cover for the fact that none of you would put up with them otherwise. There's a bit of a catch there where the forced contract means you have to operate as a group even if one member is trying to push the boundaries of that, which could be a good game if you had all discussed it beforehand, the player had pitched their PC with that concept, and you agreed it'd be an interesting concept to play out. A subversion of traditional bad-D&D group tropes could actually make an interesting game, where's my notebo--fuck I got off track.
It seems like the player is happy to follow the GM's rails as long as they get to be whacky and chaotic, and the GM is happy to deal with the whacky player as long as they ultimately follow the rails. I see no reason why you should have to deal with either of them.
I think in the example provided, the disruption wasn't the "supernatural coercion" method; i think the best groups have some metagame contrivance (in backstory, or through play) to work together and, hopefully, be friends on top of that. cohesion is an important part so all the humans at the table can play together
it sounds like the disruptive behavior honestly comes back to this player whose style, needless to say, you didn't mesh with. when it comes to style disruption, well, it circles back to the previous post I made about talking about it and outlining why you find the behavior to be disruptive. i have seen a lot of people who play the "stir the shit" types doing it not to be shitters but because they're enjoying the vicarious freedom to fuck with the power structures with no consequence.
i imagine had you all talked about this beforehand, the dynamic could have been interesting and steered in such a way as to enrich the game. you sort of hinted at that by indicating the character type was present in the previous campaign with a different GM.
honestly, when someone approaches the table from a fellow player perspective with a "fuck the police, introduce chaos" mindset, you really only have two choices: if you don't like it and don't want that in the game, say so, and maybe you can come to understand eachother's style better. the only other option really is to lean into it and relish it yourself, either by joining in the manic pixie shenanigans, or at least playing the long-suffering straight man to the antics.
what i NEVER recommend is trying to solve these problems through character action, either from your side or the GM. solving player style differences by being punitive to characters sends mixed signals and 99% of the time fucks the game and builds resentment, leading to the "FUCK IT, I QUIT".
most problems of this nature need to be solved before game time and with a Real Honest Conversation
no one can blame you for dropping that shit because it sounds like a rough time, but the explosive temper flare ups could have been avoided, the game maybe salvaged, if there had been some open and honest communication between all the humans.
rpgs are a conversation and a gaming group is a set of “serious” relationships, and relationships are made healthy by good communication and consideration
Yeah - I had previously brought this up with the GM and said my character didn't really seem to fit in with the group and maybe we could do this or that plot (for instance suggesting my character get involved with hosting an infowars-type show and learn more about the occult, this was shot down), or I could change my character around to better suit the party (no, can only change stats through XP spends), or I could just retire the character and play something else that fit better (yes but the new character would have to come in as a freshly made character, so down about 40 XP from everyone else at the time, and would explicitly have to have some reason for being under the big bad's thumb). Looking back at it, everyone couple of weeks I'd send an email with something along the lines of "I didn't really get to do very much this session, maybe this is something I could try next time" and being either told no or yes-with-consequences. Looking through it, one of the emails was about buying a dog and training it to assist with something, and basically being told that if I didn't take the dog as a Retainer the GM reserved the right to fuck with it.
I'd tried talking to the manic pixie previously, it wasn't particularly fruitful.
I feel like when you’re GM/Hosting a game, you should have a list of ‘fiction rules’ to live by.
I’ve never played C:tL, but I think ‘give the players opportunity to break from the Fair Folk’s grip bit by bit’ would be number one. I personally wouldn’t start with the players bound to a villain, because it’s a game about recovering from trauma (two seconds on a wiki), but even so, you should have been able to pull away from their grasp every session. Your moments of triumph would be gaining independence and subverting their power.
Since this is all about dark, gritty, adult choices with a fantasy varnish (I know what World of Darkness is by cultural osmosis) I think my second rule would be ‘show them they’re coping badly, show them they’re flawed’. Want to play a manic pixie dream-person who steals stuff? Cool. That’s a flaw, even if you don’t see it that way. Take a bunch of fairy drugs for the lulz? You overdose and wake up in a bad place. Rob a store for fun? They go bankrupt, which effects an ally (the store owner was their parent) and the bad vibes let in a spirit on that street.
A lot of people (otherwise good smart people, no holier then thou from me) don’t realise the narrative of a system needs to be maintained as much as the dice mechanics.
There are some people who do not understand that the spotlight cannot be theirs a) all of the time, b) at this very moment, or c) whenever they want it. They are generally stressful to play with (and moreso to run for) because they make accomplishing your character's objectives a slog and will drown your less active players.
As far as the overall situation...this is what Session 0s are supposed to ameliorate. "Hey guys, this is the overall gist of what's going on, so make sure your characters can participate in X, Y, but try to avoid Z."
I could change my character around to better suit the party (no, can only change stats through XP spends), or I could just retire the character and play something else that fit better (yes but the new character would have to come in as a freshly made character, so down about 40 XP from everyone else at the time, and would explicitly have to have some reason for being under the big bad's thumb).
I could change my character around to better suit the party (no, can only change stats through XP spends), or I could just retire the character and play something else that fit better (yes but the new character would have to come in as a freshly made character, so down about 40 XP from everyone else at the time, and would explicitly have to have some reason for being under the big bad's thumb).
Fuck that guy.
You are playing a game, shitbag. Fuck you.
The kicker of this is the same guy played in a Shadowrun game I ran and I let him change his hacker character around when a new book (Data Trails) came out.
I could change my character around to better suit the party (no, can only change stats through XP spends), or I could just retire the character and play something else that fit better (yes but the new character would have to come in as a freshly made character, so down about 40 XP from everyone else at the time, and would explicitly have to have some reason for being under the big bad's thumb).
Fuck that guy.
You are playing a game, shitbag. Fuck you.
The kicker of this is the same guy played in a Shadowrun game I ran and I let him change his hacker character around when a new book (Data Trails) came out.
I mean that explains it. He views changing your character around as an exercise in "winning". Doesn't seem to have much of a concept of group cohesion or even cooperative play.
KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited June 2019
The game I am personally a player in
I rolled very well on my influence test and I got a powersword for Sir Lansrick Chaucer. I was given it by some secretive shadowy apostle who knew his name in an alley with the express purpose of furthering the Emperor's will. I acted out this knight boy acting like Link pulling out the master sword and thrusting in the air and turned it on with the excitement and wonder of a child. Then I was chased by a group of hivers who wanted the very rare and expensive blade that I outran because they are hive slummers and I am a big knight man. That shadowy figure who I can only assume is Ollanius Pyle or Malacador the Sigilite come back to life found me and chastised me for like eight blocks telling me to stop flaunting it or I would cause an upper hive war over it.
It was great.
Also, I burnt the influence I gathered over the last mission to send a letter to mah wife on our backwater feudal planet.
I am not really the person to playing characters clones, characters that have very similar siblings, or similar non-related characters hence Katt Dogg being a bard and Kae'Arh being a monk who is deeply estranged from her brother; but I would be interested maybe in playing her if Chaucer ever has to burn fate or is knocked out of commission. I wanted a personal overall campaign goal where it wouldn't force the campaign to focus on Chaucer but still give him motivation on top of being a relatively goode boy who likes and tries to do his job well. He believes he is like one of the heroes of the stories of his planet working for his god and liege. That goal is getting my family to join up with the cell of the inquisition he's in since they would be valuable to the work with different skills they already have or could work on. Like his love who is essentially one of the heads of the PDF on their feudal world being a lady and military general.
Otherwise, I might play a nerd, or revisit my not-Punisher idea of an uncompromising cold killer where we can have some more nuance as an agent of the Inquisition.
I was basically singing "I got a golden ticket!" but with a power sword
Gming
Speaking of that, my player seemed a little disappointed that the guy in the campaign I run got away. He was paranoid of the acolytes now that his job was done. I want to make it up to him by basically creating a memory erased Frank Castle: Agent of Shield, by having his wife come back from the dead and ask for him. She finds the acolytes because the Rook, her husband, publically got a little mad and started shooting into the air outside their base when he saw a symbol of a cult being built around him. That would be as perfect as any time to bring him back and see what happens and what the acolytes choose to do with her since she's now a nephilim, which in my campaign is someone who was injected with warp-infused serum connected to Nurgle's realm that were supposed to be awakened as brainwashed servants to the domestic Nurgle cult on the planet. Problem is she was injected with a version that was further along but still incomplete. Meaning, she got back to life and had the regeneration of the other nephilim but not the body morphing powers or the hardened skin. She also can't remember what happened.
At the end of all of that, the Rook is probably going to be too fucked up to go on with the vigilante group he joined and begs the acolytes to get rid of all of this. So that's where the erasure comes in and we now have Rosco Tyruss, Agent of the Inquisition.
I could change my character around to better suit the party (no, can only change stats through XP spends), or I could just retire the character and play something else that fit better (yes but the new character would have to come in as a freshly made character, so down about 40 XP from everyone else at the time, and would explicitly have to have some reason for being under the big bad's thumb).
Fuck that guy.
You are playing a game, shitbag. Fuck you.
The kicker of this is the same guy played in a Shadowrun game I ran and I let him change his hacker character around when a new book (Data Trails) came out.
yeah by all accounts it sounds like there was a good faith attempt made by you and this particular pair of individuals are not the most socially adept people
it really is kinda sad when open dialogue can’t get things to a good space—that is a sign more than anything that you did the right thing to hit the eject button
Having people go into the Chicago Dead Zone to recover corp data is something a lot of the UCAS-set campaigns do. Which is kind of like that but more cthulhu.
This is a good old standby.
Or even just regular wilderness areas. Heck the one tribal land is all toxic wasteland pretty much from all the strip mining and such they invited in.
I want to write up a good reply to this (especially Delduwath's points), but I'm at work and my mind is bouncing between a few things, so I'll just comment on a couple things.
I personally have a longer history of freeform roleplaying online than all but 1 campaign in the pen and paper area, so I'm comfortable diceless. But you are right - coming from a storytelling aspect, it's pretty easy to slip out of the rules and that kind of drops the definition of a game.
I do not know how Shadowrun: Anarchy was received. Bull and Jason were going to run a game of it for our group, but that kind of fell through and I haven't looked at it in detail. Each SR Line dev ( Jordan Weisman, Tom Dowd, Michael Mulvahill, Rob Boyle, and Jason Hardy -- I'm sure I've missed one or two) all have different views on this stuff, and the only one I've talked in depth about the subject with was Mulvahill back in 2000. At the time, 3rd had just come out. Mike basically said that it's a foregone conclusion that you are going to not please everyone with a new edition, to the point where you can lose up to 1/3 of your previous player base. I don't know if Shadowrun tabletop was able to ride the coattails of Shadowrun Returns enough to build momentum, so I do not know what the player base looks like right now in terms of health. I'm willing to bet the systems are doing the game more harm than good though, hence the experiment with Anarchy.
Shadowrun, from a mechanical sense, came from the same mind that birthed Battletech, Crimson Skies, and Mage Knight / Heroclix. Many people associate Shadowrun with "HandfulD6", and if you go to other systems, you might as well play d20 modern or something. I don't personally ascribe to that, but I will say that Shadowrun, D20 Modern, and Shadow of the Beanstalk all have very different feels based on what aspect of the future dystopia they want to focus on. But.. yeah. As much as I'd love to see a clean break, I am not sure if Topps would be okay with that.
I should also note I've never played the OG Cyberpunk in any capacity, hence my not commenting on it.
I always thought it was strange the same company that gave us Earthdawn's Step System ended up with bucket o' D6 for SR. Though I recall D8 was discussed at some point which would have had a smoother curve, but it was dropped for some reason. Maybe cause buckets of D6 are easier to come up with than D8s.
Either way though, I much prefer the D6 mechanic of 1-3 vs 4 and up, but that's just personal preference, and not the only reason I prefer the older versions.
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
These are good points. And it isn't right of me to just stomp in here and lay out stuff without engaging in the discourse fairly. I guess I'm projecting onto the discussion, given that this will be my 20th year of following Shadowrun from both sides of the player/developer divide. I've also got a bit of pent-up concern given how much (seeming) hatred was flung at D&D 5th edition around here, and yet it seems that game turned out okay.
I would take a slight twist on one aspect, though. While Shadowrun can be a heist game, it is a character drama at its core. I have very little interest in the breaking and entering, stealing goods, and having a shootout aspects of the game. I care far more about the repercussions of those actions: what it means to be seen as disposable property, not truly a member of the society that surrounds it. To feel ground down to the marrow, othered, and tossed out. If you are a mage in my game, hopefully I'm going to let you experience what it means to be part of 1% of the population that is both feared and idolized at the same time. But again, that's my take on the game. The mechanics help me drive that in this case. But I stand by my greatest achievement being running a convention session of Shadowrun without ever rolling dice. That's what I get out of the mohawk vs. trenchcoat debate: How does your character react to a world that does not care about your soul, except as a statistic?
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
These are good points. And it isn't right of me to just stomp in here and lay out stuff without engaging in the discourse fairly. I guess I'm projecting onto the discussion, given that this will be my 20th year of following Shadowrun from both sides of the player/developer divide. I've also got a bit of pent-up concern given how much (seeming) hatred was flung at D&D 5th edition around here, and yet it seems that game turned out okay.
I would take a slight twist on one aspect, though. While Shadowrun can be a heist game, it is a character drama at its core. I have very little interest in the breaking and entering, stealing goods, and having a shootout aspects of the game. I care far more about the repercussions of those actions: what it means to be seen as disposable property, not truly a member of the society that surrounds it. To feel ground down to the marrow, othered, and tossed out. If you are a mage in my game, hopefully I'm going to let you experience what it means to be part of 1% of the population that is both feared and idolized at the same time. But again, that's my take on the game. The mechanics help me drive that in this case. But I stand by my greatest achievement being running a convention session of Shadowrun without ever rolling dice. That's what I get out of the mohawk vs. trenchcoat debate: How does your character react to a world that does not care about your soul, except as a statistic?
i don’t know that opaque and cumbersome rules is tied to a particular gamefeel. also don’t agree with the “this is what you’re saying” stance there because i called out the difference in style and tone explicitly in my post
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
These are good points. And it isn't right of me to just stomp in here and lay out stuff without engaging in the discourse fairly. I guess I'm projecting onto the discussion, given that this will be my 20th year of following Shadowrun from both sides of the player/developer divide. I've also got a bit of pent-up concern given how much (seeming) hatred was flung at D&D 5th edition around here, and yet it seems that game turned out okay.
I would take a slight twist on one aspect, though. While Shadowrun can be a heist game, it is a character drama at its core. I have very little interest in the breaking and entering, stealing goods, and having a shootout aspects of the game. I care far more about the repercussions of those actions: what it means to be seen as disposable property, not truly a member of the society that surrounds it. To feel ground down to the marrow, othered, and tossed out. If you are a mage in my game, hopefully I'm going to let you experience what it means to be part of 1% of the population that is both feared and idolized at the same time. But again, that's my take on the game. The mechanics help me drive that in this case. But I stand by my greatest achievement being running a convention session of Shadowrun without ever rolling dice. That's what I get out of the mohawk vs. trenchcoat debate: How does your character react to a world that does not care about your soul, except as a statistic?
Blah. Again, I'm sorry for barging in here. =/
I’d agree to some extent, but I spent a lot of time on the old SR MUXes, which are heavy role play and reinforced the character interaction.
The Manual: Everything you need to know to play. The Handouts: Includes all the character sheets (both full and light) and the material for the Gamesmaster.
The Arcana: weird stuff and supplementary material. Not yet available. Expect around the start of the next arc.
There's a lot of great stuff in there, I think.
I would welcome advice or thoughts on:
1. The Fool's class die (D6) - they can choose one additional face to count as a 6. I'm assuming the smart side to pick is the 1, because it minimises the likelihood of critical fails. Are there other factors worth considering when making that choice? Am I over- and/or underthinking it?
2. Does anyone have recommendations for fantasy and/or cyberpunky coins for use as Fair Gold tokens for the Neo?
Posts
Shadowrun is a heist game
Mohawk vs trench coat is literally set dressing and flavor and tone and has nothing to do with how many dice you throw
also, you can have a robust mechanical backbone without being clumsy and unwieldy. genesys is an example of this. exalted is in the other direction.
lastly, saying you discard portions of the rules as written doesn’t paint the game as being good at what it purports to be good at
Do I call her Iron Maiden or Anasthesia?
These are good points. And it isn't right of me to just stomp in here and lay out stuff without engaging in the discourse fairly. I guess I'm projecting onto the discussion, given that this will be my 20th year of following Shadowrun from both sides of the player/developer divide. I've also got a bit of pent-up concern given how much (seeming) hatred was flung at D&D 5th edition around here, and yet it seems that game turned out okay.
I would take a slight twist on one aspect, though. While Shadowrun can be a heist game, it is a character drama at its core. I have very little interest in the breaking and entering, stealing goods, and having a shootout aspects of the game. I care far more about the repercussions of those actions: what it means to be seen as disposable property, not truly a member of the society that surrounds it. To feel ground down to the marrow, othered, and tossed out. If you are a mage in my game, hopefully I'm going to let you experience what it means to be part of 1% of the population that is both feared and idolized at the same time. But again, that's my take on the game. The mechanics help me drive that in this case. But I stand by my greatest achievement being running a convention session of Shadowrun without ever rolling dice. That's what I get out of the mohawk vs. trenchcoat debate: How does your character react to a world that does not care about your soul, except as a statistic?
Blah. Again, I'm sorry for barging in here. =/
Anaesthesia, my friends call me Ann. You can call me *shriek of pain*
You should maybe check out Blades in the Dark if you haven't already!
Would you mind elaborating on this a little bit? In what way do the mechanics drive this? And, maybe more to the point, which mechanics do you feel drive this? For example, I can see how very lethal rules ("In combat, roll a d20. On a 20, you survive; otherwise you die!") would create a mood of caution, negotiation, clever planning, and avoiding combat at all costs; at the same time, I can see how a game where any corner street preacher can cast Resurrection for a fee of 1gp would create a mood of charging into the fray, taking risks, and so on.
What about Shadowrun's mechanics do you feel help create the atmosphere of disenfranchisement? If I had to guess, it wouldn't be the rule about how many bonus initiative passes you get in combat if you have Wired Reflexes 4 or whatever, or how many gigs of data your cybereye camera can store; rather, it might be the rule about how an inconspicuous cyberarm isn't actually affordable, or something along those lines.
Follow-up question: Do you think the game-feel you're looking for would suffer if you chopped out or simplified the mechanics that aren't actively contributing to the mood you're looking for?
(Idle musing: affordable inconspicuous cyberarms are only really relevant in a setting where having obvious chrome is going to bring social trouble down on your head. It has less to do with the actual mechanics and more with the settings design, although I'd say that "affordability and availability of inconspicuous cyberlimbs" is at least 50% a mechanics thing.)
Also, I'm curious about this: combined with this: If you were able to have this great experience with the game where not a single die was rolled, I have to wonder: are the game mechanics actually serving you in any way?
All of this musing is coming from the same place, an eye-opening lesson that the fine folks on this forum taught me over the years: A game has mechanics because it is attempting to create a certain kind of experience; if the experience that you are looking for is not one that's created by those mechanics, then perhaps you might be better served by picking a game that more closely caters to the experience you want.
PBtA games are still shattering and breaking ground with how they cut to the bone of generating meaty, satisfying gameplay experiences that feels consistent and reproducible
also for what it's worth I agree with Delduwath here, I don't think you barged in unfairly (the only part I took very minor umbrage with was the assumption of tone and that's not a big thing!)
i freely admit i was one of the vocal detractors of D&D5 here, and then I played it and now it's the cornerstone of my longest campaign to date
and I think the statement you provided about having not rolled any dice echoes Adam Koebel's sentiments about abandoning a game when it's no longer servicing your mission statement --
(as an aside Office Hours is a great show and everyone should watch that has even a passing interest in game design/GMing from a designer perspective)
I think everything you point to is something that D&D struggles with, too--so many groups say "the best sessions I've played are ones where the dice don't come out", and it's an uncomfortable thing to be confronted with the idea that at that point, you aren't actually playing the game anymore; you're still telling your campaign story, but at that point it really is improvisational acting... and there's nothing wrong with that, but I think we're doing ourselves a disservice by not asking ourselves if there's an option that would not only serve our story, but also enhance it.
http://www.ardens.org/games/the-sprawl/
i think it leans way more towards Android/Blade Runner than Shadowrun, but honestly you could lay a flavor of magic/the supernatural on top of it REALLY easy and it wouldn't change all that much. there are other urban fantasy PBTA games out there that could work as inspiration (such as Urban Shadows).
to swing this back around, I hope Catalyst sees this as an opportunity to bring Shadowrun into the pool of modern game design. 5th did this in a lot of ways (regressed in some others) and it's now revitalized the D&D brand to heights of popularity even greater than 3.5 did. Shadowrun could be that next thing... if it wants to.
or it could slavishly adhere to the design precepts of 10+ years ago in the name of pleasing the very vocal minority of hardcores. i won't pontificate overmuch on whether that's a good or bad decision.
I personally have a longer history of freeform roleplaying online than all but 1 campaign in the pen and paper area, so I'm comfortable diceless. But you are right - coming from a storytelling aspect, it's pretty easy to slip out of the rules and that kind of drops the definition of a game.
I do not know how Shadowrun: Anarchy was received. Bull and Jason were going to run a game of it for our group, but that kind of fell through and I haven't looked at it in detail. Each SR Line dev ( Jordan Weisman, Tom Dowd, Michael Mulvahill, Rob Boyle, and Jason Hardy -- I'm sure I've missed one or two) all have different views on this stuff, and the only one I've talked in depth about the subject with was Mulvahill back in 2000. At the time, 3rd had just come out. Mike basically said that it's a foregone conclusion that you are going to not please everyone with a new edition, to the point where you can lose up to 1/3 of your previous player base. I don't know if Shadowrun tabletop was able to ride the coattails of Shadowrun Returns enough to build momentum, so I do not know what the player base looks like right now in terms of health. I'm willing to bet the systems are doing the game more harm than good though, hence the experiment with Anarchy.
Shadowrun, from a mechanical sense, came from the same mind that birthed Battletech, Crimson Skies, and Mage Knight / Heroclix. Many people associate Shadowrun with "HandfulD6", and if you go to other systems, you might as well play d20 modern or something. I don't personally ascribe to that, but I will say that Shadowrun, D20 Modern, and Shadow of the Beanstalk all have very different feels based on what aspect of the future dystopia they want to focus on. But.. yeah. As much as I'd love to see a clean break, I am not sure if Topps would be okay with that.
I should also note I've never played the OG Cyberpunk in any capacity, hence my not commenting on it.
I came upon this Reddit post where the creator of "Shadowrun in the Sprawl" discusses how "The Sprawl" and "Blades in the Dark" differ from each other (despite both being roughly in the "heist" genre of game), how the differences would serve a Shadowrun hack, and also briefly discusses two different Shadowrun-flavored Blades in the Dark hacks:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/8gepsq/shadowrun_hacks_shadowrun_in_the_sprawl_vs_karma/dyc1wk0/
I keep getting irritated with CGL because they constantly lose the thread on why the broadest cross-section of people want to play Shadowrun. Which is the setting. Which is unique in being urban fantasy set in the near future. That's the core thesis of why so many people would like to play Shadowrun if they could get past the mechanics. SR5 felt like a game from 2009 which, given that it came out in 2013, wasn't the worst outcome for a corporate property. But it also came so close on the heels of SR4 and offered so little that represented a clear mechanical improvement, people sort of stopped caring. 6e is definitely in danger of that if all it offers is more complexity and additional systems under the guise of "simplification."
There are better options for literally every part of Shadowrun except near future urban fantasy (also, hi, if anyone's reading this who wants to try to hit a niche in the hobby, there's one). The single most correlated search for Shadowrun? "Alternatives." That says things about the game that our criticism never possibly could.
For your gratification, open the spoiler:
Blades in the Dark hack: https://iwwlab.machinespirit.net/
Shadow Hack (Cortex, not Cortex+): http://hacktheshadows.mageblade.org/downloads/
Running in NOLA (Dungeon World hack): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MR3zX-JLSJFdtOrPEJdumR8sEdiDvmd66Fu1O3Ek-Jg/edit?pli=1#
Edge of Shadows (hacked Edge of the Empire -- Genesys): https://www.dropbox.com/s/1okuloxoon884s9/Edge of the Shadows V1.3.pdf?dl=0
ShadowGuard (MouseGuard hack): http://mightyatom.blogspot.com/2010/04/mouse-guard-shadowrun-hack.html
Spirits of Chrome and Cyberspace (Fate hack): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wJhb1O8tMxejtPjaW43O4SphGZlZJqAI7lc5le3JHRE/edit?hl=en&pref=2&pli=1
Savage World Shadowrun (Savage Worlds hack): https://wrathofzombie.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/savage-worlds-of-shadowrun-final.pdf
When huge swathes of your audience wants to play your setting but doesn't want to touch your game, you need to get real.
agree completely, when i talk about the heist tropes that just seems to be the most common sort of setup. both of the PC games do a lot around the “infiltrate and steal paydata” structure.
it’s not all of it for sure but it feels like the “staple” like killing goblins is the “staple” of baby D&D
I think runs are similar to dungeon crawls. They're a reasonable but comically underexpressive shorthand for what the game is capable of. I think if we're going to talk about why people want to engage with the setting it's important not to ignore the fact that "like D&D, but with flying cars, corporate sociopolitical ascendancy, in an unexplored and largely new but familiar world" is an excellent elevator pitch. (I generally do not appreciate the lore post 2060, a/k/a the starting point for 3e.)
Have there every been resources for you to be in somewhere other than a city in Shadowrun?
I’ve never played it, but I’m intrigued to know how they handle nature, and since it’s D&D but cyberpunk, do they have their own outer planes? Are there nightcore trap remix elementals? Do bad robots go to Android Hell?
I played a thug called Sol Demsky with a bad Mickey Rourke impression.
A big dumb lovable gangster.
Stomped a bunch of big spiders.
Had to make a deal with a big talky spider.
Drowned a man.
Then super drowned a man with a weird water golem/crossroads demon type thing.
Started burning down a mansion to the tune of "Another Saturday Night" because it's 1967.
Shrilly screamed and ran when a painting ghost came to life and I made off with my canvass bag of goods.
My friend, who I believe did GMing the first time tonight, made a very good adventure and was great at GMing.
Nice concepts, system feels weird with how it handles stats, etc. Organization in the book is a mess. Doesn't feel up to classic OP quality. Whatever that means.
Scion was ...bad. 1E's use of Exalted mechanics without the guiderails of keywords, etc was just a mess. Anything that fixes that is an improvement. But so far they haven't really sold me on 2E yet.
In other news FINALLY got Stars Without Number Revised hardcopy on the way.
Also, if I wanted to run CoC but in the modern era, what books would I need?
The newest edition of CoC looks to have you covered from what I've seen in the core rulebook. They straight up have parallel 20s and modern stuff but there is more emphasis on the 20s stuff.
Also writing the final adventure to the second act of my series of campaigns. I have like a lot. It will get easier once I get past the middle since the third act is basically just a big action climax starting with a halo jump into an ethereal stormy sky because if you attempted to teleport through it you would end up in a senseless maddening city of daemons built upon the congealing banal essence of a dead god to land on an island with an ancient alien temple within an inactive volcano. I've also got five pages explaining why this climax adventure basically is how it is because it relies on having done a minimum of like five adventures I wrote and played through and possibly all 11 if I count the first act (not counting the total of 8 from the second act). I'm going to be posting it on the blog hence the need for compiling.
I’m calling it Storm March. Think prospectors and archaeologists, but you’re loveable rogues that ride giant bats over flying islands and fight monsters.
Take a look if you want to see what it’s about: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/226301/dungeon-world-storm-march-first-light/p1
I’m going to set up a new recruitment thread on Saturday (that will become your thread for all your adventures), and we’ll start a couple days after once we’ve worked together to make your characters and I’ve answered any queries you’ve got.
All are welcome, zero experience required!
As a current player, I heartily encourage anyone that's interested and has time (not much required!) to jump in!
The first of these was the phenomenon of forced interaction with other PCs. A big part of my decision to leave was that one of the players consistently plays a sort of "manic pixie" character that will do things like throw drinks at authority figures or "innocently" cause horrible accidents or other misfortunes for the group (i.e. what happens if I open the thing everyone said not to open? Oh, they're guarding it so I can't have it? I'll focus all of my energy on stealing it. Tee hee!"). I'd already played in a campaign with this person and was sick of the schtick with her previous character. In hindsight, I realize I was fortunate the first time around as the GM didn't let her hog the spotlight too much and tried to incorporate her "mischief" into ways to keep the plot going. What got me thinking, though, is that isn't this behaviour a form of metagaming, in that you know your character is automatically in the group with the other PCs by dint of your participation and so they cannot react in the way they would if you were an NPC?
The second thought is around player agency. The GM in this case started with the trope of "scary evil supernatural big bad summons you all and compels you to do their bidding", and essentially the whole campaign focused on doing chores for the scary big bad. The GM essentially forced everyone into a Motley oath on first meeting (again, supernatural compulsion to work with the group). Since this was mostly supernatural/occult stuff and my character is more socially-oriented with Resources, my contribution to most games is driving people places and buying them things. I'd often sit in Discord for hours and have no involvement with the game, or even an opportunity to get involved. I was leaving every game pissed off and it got to the point where my wife would get me to go take the dog for a walk to blow off steam because I was visibly irritated. This culminated in last night's game, where the manic pixie gleefully went to help the big bad (an authority figure she ostensibly hates and has tried to provoke many times) sabotage the electrical grid so that the GM could narrate the big bad and her cronies gratuitously running amok for no discernible reason. I wound up sending him an email saying that I could tolerate one of these terrible tropes but not both, and that I quit.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
no one can blame you for dropping that shit because it sounds like a rough time, but the explosive temper flare ups could have been avoided, the game maybe salvaged, if there had been some open and honest communication between all the humans.
rpgs are a conversation and a gaming group is a set of “serious” relationships, and relationships are made healthy by good communication and consideration
I don't personally treat "metagaming" as a bad word in RPGs. I often operate in Director stance as both player and GM so metagaming is just playing to me, but this player is depending on an implied social contract to cover for the fact that none of you would put up with them otherwise. There's a bit of a catch there where the forced contract means you have to operate as a group even if one member is trying to push the boundaries of that, which could be a good game if you had all discussed it beforehand, the player had pitched their PC with that concept, and you agreed it'd be an interesting concept to play out. A subversion of traditional bad-D&D group tropes could actually make an interesting game, where's my notebo--fuck I got off track.
It seems like the player is happy to follow the GM's rails as long as they get to be whacky and chaotic, and the GM is happy to deal with the whacky player as long as they ultimately follow the rails. I see no reason why you should have to deal with either of them.
I think in the example provided, the disruption wasn't the "supernatural coercion" method; i think the best groups have some metagame contrivance (in backstory, or through play) to work together and, hopefully, be friends on top of that. cohesion is an important part so all the humans at the table can play together
it sounds like the disruptive behavior honestly comes back to this player whose style, needless to say, you didn't mesh with. when it comes to style disruption, well, it circles back to the previous post I made about talking about it and outlining why you find the behavior to be disruptive. i have seen a lot of people who play the "stir the shit" types doing it not to be shitters but because they're enjoying the vicarious freedom to fuck with the power structures with no consequence.
i imagine had you all talked about this beforehand, the dynamic could have been interesting and steered in such a way as to enrich the game. you sort of hinted at that by indicating the character type was present in the previous campaign with a different GM.
honestly, when someone approaches the table from a fellow player perspective with a "fuck the police, introduce chaos" mindset, you really only have two choices: if you don't like it and don't want that in the game, say so, and maybe you can come to understand eachother's style better. the only other option really is to lean into it and relish it yourself, either by joining in the manic pixie shenanigans, or at least playing the long-suffering straight man to the antics.
what i NEVER recommend is trying to solve these problems through character action, either from your side or the GM. solving player style differences by being punitive to characters sends mixed signals and 99% of the time fucks the game and builds resentment, leading to the "FUCK IT, I QUIT".
Yeah - I had previously brought this up with the GM and said my character didn't really seem to fit in with the group and maybe we could do this or that plot (for instance suggesting my character get involved with hosting an infowars-type show and learn more about the occult, this was shot down), or I could change my character around to better suit the party (no, can only change stats through XP spends), or I could just retire the character and play something else that fit better (yes but the new character would have to come in as a freshly made character, so down about 40 XP from everyone else at the time, and would explicitly have to have some reason for being under the big bad's thumb). Looking back at it, everyone couple of weeks I'd send an email with something along the lines of "I didn't really get to do very much this session, maybe this is something I could try next time" and being either told no or yes-with-consequences. Looking through it, one of the emails was about buying a dog and training it to assist with something, and basically being told that if I didn't take the dog as a Retainer the GM reserved the right to fuck with it.
I'd tried talking to the manic pixie previously, it wasn't particularly fruitful.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
I’ve never played C:tL, but I think ‘give the players opportunity to break from the Fair Folk’s grip bit by bit’ would be number one. I personally wouldn’t start with the players bound to a villain, because it’s a game about recovering from trauma (two seconds on a wiki), but even so, you should have been able to pull away from their grasp every session. Your moments of triumph would be gaining independence and subverting their power.
Since this is all about dark, gritty, adult choices with a fantasy varnish (I know what World of Darkness is by cultural osmosis) I think my second rule would be ‘show them they’re coping badly, show them they’re flawed’. Want to play a manic pixie dream-person who steals stuff? Cool. That’s a flaw, even if you don’t see it that way. Take a bunch of fairy drugs for the lulz? You overdose and wake up in a bad place. Rob a store for fun? They go bankrupt, which effects an ally (the store owner was their parent) and the bad vibes let in a spirit on that street.
A lot of people (otherwise good smart people, no holier then thou from me) don’t realise the narrative of a system needs to be maintained as much as the dice mechanics.
As far as the overall situation...this is what Session 0s are supposed to ameliorate. "Hey guys, this is the overall gist of what's going on, so make sure your characters can participate in X, Y, but try to avoid Z."
Fuck that guy.
You are playing a game, shitbag. Fuck you.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The kicker of this is the same guy played in a Shadowrun game I ran and I let him change his hacker character around when a new book (Data Trails) came out.
Also on Steam and PSN: twobadcats
I mean that explains it. He views changing your character around as an exercise in "winning". Doesn't seem to have much of a concept of group cohesion or even cooperative play.
It was great.
Also, I burnt the influence I gathered over the last mission to send a letter to mah wife on our backwater feudal planet.
I am not really the person to playing characters clones, characters that have very similar siblings, or similar non-related characters hence Katt Dogg being a bard and Kae'Arh being a monk who is deeply estranged from her brother; but I would be interested maybe in playing her if Chaucer ever has to burn fate or is knocked out of commission. I wanted a personal overall campaign goal where it wouldn't force the campaign to focus on Chaucer but still give him motivation on top of being a relatively goode boy who likes and tries to do his job well. He believes he is like one of the heroes of the stories of his planet working for his god and liege. That goal is getting my family to join up with the cell of the inquisition he's in since they would be valuable to the work with different skills they already have or could work on. Like his love who is essentially one of the heads of the PDF on their feudal world being a lady and military general.
Otherwise, I might play a nerd, or revisit my not-Punisher idea of an uncompromising cold killer where we can have some more nuance as an agent of the Inquisition.
I was basically singing "I got a golden ticket!" but with a power sword
Gming
At the end of all of that, the Rook is probably going to be too fucked up to go on with the vigilante group he joined and begs the acolytes to get rid of all of this. So that's where the erasure comes in and we now have Rosco Tyruss, Agent of the Inquisition.
yeah by all accounts it sounds like there was a good faith attempt made by you and this particular pair of individuals are not the most socially adept people
it really is kinda sad when open dialogue can’t get things to a good space—that is a sign more than anything that you did the right thing to hit the eject button
This is a good old standby.
Or even just regular wilderness areas. Heck the one tribal land is all toxic wasteland pretty much from all the strip mining and such they invited in.
I always thought it was strange the same company that gave us Earthdawn's Step System ended up with bucket o' D6 for SR. Though I recall D8 was discussed at some point which would have had a smoother curve, but it was dropped for some reason. Maybe cause buckets of D6 are easier to come up with than D8s.
Either way though, I much prefer the D6 mechanic of 1-3 vs 4 and up, but that's just personal preference, and not the only reason I prefer the older versions.
I’d agree to some extent, but I spent a lot of time on the old SR MUXes, which are heavy role play and reinforced the character interaction.
http://diecomic.com/rpg/
There's a lot of great stuff in there, I think.
I would welcome advice or thoughts on:
1. The Fool's class die (D6) - they can choose one additional face to count as a 6. I'm assuming the smart side to pick is the 1, because it minimises the likelihood of critical fails. Are there other factors worth considering when making that choice? Am I over- and/or underthinking it?
2. Does anyone have recommendations for fantasy and/or cyberpunky coins for use as Fair Gold tokens for the Neo?