WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
So of the three big things I think that really make Shadowrun tick, namely:
- It's got fantasy and science together. Guns and swords! Hacking and fireballs! Cyborg elves!
- It's got megacorps, cyberpunkiness, and a general "Stick it to the man" theme going on
- It's Earth based, which makes it cool if you personally know some of the areas where Big Stuff(tm) happened
Can a competing product make do with just two? This is largely a question that came from me thinking if a Shadowrun-esque RPG would appear that's not based on our earth.
So of the three big things I think that really make Shadowrun tick, namely:
- It's got fantasy and science together. Guns and swords! Hacking and fireballs! Cyborg elves!
- It's got megacorps, cyberpunkiness, and a general "Stick it to the man" theme going on
- It's Earth based, which makes it cool if you personally know some of the areas where Big Stuff(tm) happened
Can a competing product make do with just two? This is largely a question that came from me thinking if a Shadowrun-esque RPG would appear that's not based on our earth.
Personally I find the last part to be the least attractive part of the setting. What little entertainment I'd garner from speculative future geopolitics is heavily outweighed by all the icky stuff mapping fantasy races onto the real world gets you.
You can keep all the trappings of capitalist dystopia and 'earth' culture without having to set it there.
You could make Shadowrun the System work reasonably well if you just streamlined the absolute fuck out of it. Like, the skills, the gear, the spells, the combat rules, the decking rules...
See also Modiphius' Roll20. We're playing Conan right now and I like the rules but they're just needlessly complex. Like, unnecessarily so. Why?
You could make Shadowrun the System work reasonably well if you just streamlined the absolute fuck out of it. Like, the skills, the gear, the spells, the combat rules, the decking rules...
See also Modiphius' Roll20. We're playing Conan right now and I like the rules but they're just needlessly complex. Like, unnecessarily so. Why?
Probably for the same reason Star Trek, Conan and Infinify all have different d6 markings on their effect die: those games all got caught up in a weird cluster of being developed at the same time if I remember right.
Also they tried streamlining Shadowrun and honestly Anarchy is even less appealing to play because it’s still a mess but doesn’t have that morbid desire to dive into the mass of bullshit that normal shadowrun has.
I am fairly excited that the pdf of Lancer should be done before the end of the year. The art is gonna be so good and the layout work should hopefully make it more readable.
I kinda want to start a group for rotating system and setting rpg one or two shot sessions online like every other weekend or something?
You could make Shadowrun the System work reasonably well if you just streamlined the absolute fuck out of it. Like, the skills, the gear, the spells, the combat rules, the decking rules...
See also Modiphius' Roll20. We're playing Conan right now and I like the rules but they're just needlessly complex. Like, unnecessarily so. Why?
I think at this point the only way to save Shadowrun by streamlining it would be to burn the whole thing down and start building the system from scratch with simplicity as a core design principal.
And it can't involve people who have been involved in previous editions.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Keep Shadowrun as just a setting. Publish future Shadowrun books as system agnostic - deep dives into the setting, adventure ideas, characters/NPCs, that sort of thing. Then license out the Shadowrun name for other RPGs, so various publishers can put together their own way to make it all actually work.
Realistically speaking, we'd just end up getting D&D: Shadowrun out of the deal, the worst of both worlds, but I can dream.
I think what bugs me about Shadowrun is it’s most basic system isn’t even that clunky? It’s attribute + skill added together to create a dice pool of d6 that you then roll to see if you can do the task. 5 and 6 is considered a “hit” and you need to accumulate so many “hits” in one roll to achieve the task. If you get at least enough “hits” for the task, you succeed. If you generate enough 1s on the roll equal to have the dice pool or more, you “glitch” and get a negative side affect.
Like that’s a pretty basic system, and is very similar to the WoD/CoD system that I’ve been playing in for over a year. It’s just everything that gets layered on top of that, the way it is implemented, and the clunky and inconsistent nature of the rules that cause the problems.
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GrobianWhat's on sale?Pliers!Registered Userregular
Has anyone read through Odyssey of the Dragonlords yet? I only glanced over it and decided to wait for the physical copy to give it a thorough read. But I was very into Greek myths as a kid so it's very much my jam and I'm super excited.
Sad that I probably won't be able to find a group for it. Maybe I need to offer DMing for strangers?
I think what bugs me about Shadowrun is it’s most basic system isn’t even that clunky? It’s attribute + skill added together to create a dice pool of d6 that you then roll to see if you can do the task. 5 and 6 is considered a “hit” and you need to accumulate so many “hits” in one roll to achieve the task. If you get at least enough “hits” for the task, you succeed. If you generate enough 1s on the roll equal to have the dice pool or more, you “glitch” and get a negative side affect.
Like that’s a pretty basic system, and is very similar to the WoD/CoD system that I’ve been playing in for over a year. It’s just everything that gets layered on top of that, the way it is implemented, and the clunky and inconsistent nature of the rules that cause the problems.
Yeah, I think if you stripped some of the added chaff out, you could definitely make it a decent system.
My big move would be stripping down the equipment a lot. There's a ton of granularity in all of Shadowrun's equipment, and I'd want to turn that into like, six guns (pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle, machine pistol, machine gun, taser). Which is the sort of thing we already see stuff like the HBS games.
In doing that, I'd also probably reduce a lot of the dice pool bonuses that various pieces of equipment give you, and in turn reduce the thresholds that you need to succeed on various skills. I think one of the big problems that Shadowrun ends up with is that it creates a way to get a dozen dice on any given role, and then feels the need to adjust thresholds for someone who takes all of the weird options to get there, making it hard to succeed if you aren't weirdly specialized. By reducing the massive pool of options, that would become much less of a thing.
Really Shadowrun is an excellent candidate for computer assisted RPG. I know that Wizards pitched (and fucked up) the electronic table a decade ago but I'm sad that killed the concept dead.
I'd also get rid of Essense loss for cyberware - I've seen a few good discussions on how the mechanic is ableist by nature.
I think you just do it like the video games, where Essence only affects your ability to channel magic. The tradeoff between magic and tech is a good one for gameplay, everything else about Essence yeeeaaaahhh not so much.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
If you want it as a limiting factor, I would just have it be that there is no cyberware that can improve your ability to do magic and no magic that can improve your ability to hack
But even that I don't think is necessary, I think that it's all a part of the weird siloing of characters that Shadowrun is deadset on
I know that Cyberpunk 2077 just discovered that concept of "How much of your body can you replace before you cease to be you?" tension but I feel like that's a vital bit of the genre.
I do wish that there was an inverse style of thing for Magic which again pitches the concept of how much you're willing to give up yourself in exchange.
Though the ableist angle is one I need to think on more.
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
Because it's not so much a trade. If having dermal plating or wired reflexes doesn't affect essence then every mage would probably pick them up, since they're not something you have to allocate resources to.
For a D&D analogy it's more like removing the costs of wearing Plate Armor and making it available to everyone than it is like taking a level dip in Fighter
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
Because it's not so much a trade. If having dermal plating or wired reflexes doesn't affect essence then every mage would probably pick them up, since they're not something you have to allocate resources to.
For a D&D analogy it's more like removing the costs of wearing Plate Armor and making it available to everyone than it is like taking a level dip in Fighter
Eh if it still costs points to get money to pay for the cyber gear that's points I can't put into my magic.
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
Because it's not so much a trade. If having dermal plating or wired reflexes doesn't affect essence then every mage would probably pick them up, since they're not something you have to allocate resources to.
For a D&D analogy it's more like removing the costs of wearing Plate Armor and making it available to everyone than it is like taking a level dip in Fighter
Eh if it still costs points to get money to pay for the cyber gear that's points I can't put into my magic.
I'm not familiar enough with SR to know or understand how Essence works, but I do like the lore flavor of magic coming from the organics of a person, and the more cyber you are the less magic you can wield.
I'd also get rid of Essense loss for cyberware - I've seen a few good discussions on how the mechanic is ableist by nature.
Huh, that's a really interesting point.
One of the core principles of cyberpunk (at least, from what I understand; I may be wrong) is that technology dehumanizes. To some extent, it's that it turns people into faceless cogs in capitalist, technologist distopias, and to some extent it's that replacing parts of your human fleshbag makes you less human in some way. Cyberpunk has a bunch of problematic tropes at its core, and that last bit certainly seems like one of them. Is there any value to it? I'm not sure I need "having a pacemaker makes you inhuman", but "having a bulletproof titanium torso and steel hands that can crush a wall changes how you perceive and relate to other people" seems like an interesting and worthwhile thing to explore.
Would there still need to be some balancing factor to make sure that players aren't walking around with 10 copies of every piece of available cyberware? What if "Essense loss" is renamed and recontextualized from "putting technology into your body takes away a certain je ne sais quoi of being human, until you're a mindless husk" and more towards something like "there's a limit to how much technology a body can handle, and past that the brain just can't incorporate its operation into its routine"? Is that still fraught in a way I don't see?
Or, would you just do away with any such limits, and if the player can afford some tech then they can go right ahead and stick it into their body?
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
Because it's not so much a trade. If having dermal plating or wired reflexes doesn't affect essence then every mage would probably pick them up, since they're not something you have to allocate resources to.
For a D&D analogy it's more like removing the costs of wearing Plate Armor and making it available to everyone than it is like taking a level dip in Fighter
Right, it's a balancing mechanic. The problem is that it's a shitty balancing mechanic that makes some questionable statements on the nature of humanity.
On a personal level I find the idea of transhumanism fascinating, and if I could upload my brain to something so that I could live forever I would. That probably makes Eclipse Phase more of the game for me, but I do love Shadowrun. Mostly because of the SNES game.
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
Because it's not so much a trade. If having dermal plating or wired reflexes doesn't affect essence then every mage would probably pick them up, since they're not something you have to allocate resources to.
For a D&D analogy it's more like removing the costs of wearing Plate Armor and making it available to everyone than it is like taking a level dip in Fighter
Eh if it still costs points to get money to pay for the cyber gear that's points I can't put into my magic.
Perhaps if there was some required ability points, rather than just money, put into acquiring/using cyberware? I mean, with actual modern prostheses you still need to go through extensive physical therapy in order to use them. Why not have a skill that represents your ability to rewire your own brain to interface with cyberware?
I'd also get rid of Essense loss for cyberware - I've seen a few good discussions on how the mechanic is ableist by nature.
Huh, that's a really interesting point.
One of the core principles of cyberpunk (at least, from what I understand; I may be wrong) is that technology dehumanizes. To some extent, it's that it turns people into faceless cogs in capitalist, technologist distopias, and to some extent it's that replacing parts of your human fleshbag makes you less human in some way. Cyberpunk has a bunch of problematic tropes at its core, and that last bit certainly seems like one of them. Is there any value to it? I'm not sure I need "having a pacemaker makes you inhuman", but "having a bulletproof titanium torso and steel hands that can crush a wall changes how you perceive and relate to other people" seems like an interesting and worthwhile thing to explore.
Would there still need to be some balancing factor to make sure that players aren't walking around with 10 copies of every piece of available cyberware? What if "Essense loss" is renamed and recontextualized from "putting technology into your body takes away a certain je ne sais quoi of being human, until you're a mindless husk" and more towards something like "there's a limit to how much technology a body can handle, and past that the brain just can't incorporate its operation into its routine"? Is that still fraught in a way I don't see?
Or, would you just do away with any such limits, and if the player can afford some tech then they can go right ahead and stick it into their body?
The point that I've seen made by disability advocates on this is that the "technology dehumanizes" argument is just flat out false - for many people with disabilities, assistive technology is very humanizing, granting them autonomy and dignity in their lives. And for them, having a game mechanic of "this technology which makes you feel more human comes with a Faustian bargain" is hostile to them.
Honestly, there are a lot of badly thought out balancing mechanics built on stereotypes that need to be rethought.
I mean I have metal reinforced bones in real life. They're painful and change my perception of the world, but I'd probably be having a much different go of things if they'd just taken my whole right forearm/hand instead (I'm right handed).
I mean I have metal reinforced bones in real life. They're painful and change my perception of the world, but I'd probably be having a much different go of things if they'd just taken my whole right forearm/hand instead (I'm right handed).
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
Because it's not so much a trade. If having dermal plating or wired reflexes doesn't affect essence then every mage would probably pick them up, since they're not something you have to allocate resources to.
For a D&D analogy it's more like removing the costs of wearing Plate Armor and making it available to everyone than it is like taking a level dip in Fighter
Eh if it still costs points to get money to pay for the cyber gear that's points I can't put into my magic.
Perhaps if there was some required ability points, rather than just money, put into acquiring/using cyberware? I mean, with actual modern prostheses you still need to go through extensive physical therapy in order to use them. Why not have a skill that represents your ability to rewire your own brain to interface with cyberware?
Like, anyone can use cybernetics to get human-equivalent performance, but it takes dedicated practice to get better than that? And that practice not being put into spellcasting or shooting or... and thus a difference in stats?
I'd also get rid of Essense loss for cyberware - I've seen a few good discussions on how the mechanic is ableist by nature.
Huh, that's a really interesting point.
One of the core principles of cyberpunk (at least, from what I understand; I may be wrong) is that technology dehumanizes. To some extent, it's that it turns people into faceless cogs in capitalist, technologist distopias, and to some extent it's that replacing parts of your human fleshbag makes you less human in some way. Cyberpunk has a bunch of problematic tropes at its core, and that last bit certainly seems like one of them. Is there any value to it? I'm not sure I need "having a pacemaker makes you inhuman", but "having a bulletproof titanium torso and steel hands that can crush a wall changes how you perceive and relate to other people" seems like an interesting and worthwhile thing to explore.
Would there still need to be some balancing factor to make sure that players aren't walking around with 10 copies of every piece of available cyberware? What if "Essense loss" is renamed and recontextualized from "putting technology into your body takes away a certain je ne sais quoi of being human, until you're a mindless husk" and more towards something like "there's a limit to how much technology a body can handle, and past that the brain just can't incorporate its operation into its routine"? Is that still fraught in a way I don't see?
Or, would you just do away with any such limits, and if the player can afford some tech then they can go right ahead and stick it into their body?
The point that I've seen made by disability advocates on this is that the "technology dehumanizes" argument is just flat out false - for many people with disabilities, assistive technology is very humanizing, granting them autonomy and dignity in their lives. And for them, having a game mechanic of "this technology which makes you feel more human comes with a Faustian bargain" is hostile to them.
Honestly, there are a lot of badly thought out balancing mechanics built on stereotypes that need to be rethought.
Is there a meaningful distinction between assistive technology that keeps a person alive, and/or grants autonomy and dignity, and technology that is specifically designed to surpass biological human abilities? Between, say, a prosthetic arm that lets someone butter their toast again, and a prosthetic arm that has a built-in gun?
I guess this gets pretty close to the line of "should athletes with prosthetic limbs be allowed to compete in the Olympics?".
I'd also get rid of Essense loss for cyberware - I've seen a few good discussions on how the mechanic is ableist by nature.
Huh, that's a really interesting point.
One of the core principles of cyberpunk (at least, from what I understand; I may be wrong) is that technology dehumanizes. To some extent, it's that it turns people into faceless cogs in capitalist, technologist distopias, and to some extent it's that replacing parts of your human fleshbag makes you less human in some way. Cyberpunk has a bunch of problematic tropes at its core, and that last bit certainly seems like one of them. Is there any value to it? I'm not sure I need "having a pacemaker makes you inhuman", but "having a bulletproof titanium torso and steel hands that can crush a wall changes how you perceive and relate to other people" seems like an interesting and worthwhile thing to explore.
Would there still need to be some balancing factor to make sure that players aren't walking around with 10 copies of every piece of available cyberware? What if "Essense loss" is renamed and recontextualized from "putting technology into your body takes away a certain je ne sais quoi of being human, until you're a mindless husk" and more towards something like "there's a limit to how much technology a body can handle, and past that the brain just can't incorporate its operation into its routine"? Is that still fraught in a way I don't see?
Or, would you just do away with any such limits, and if the player can afford some tech then they can go right ahead and stick it into their body?
The point that I've seen made by disability advocates on this is that the "technology dehumanizes" argument is just flat out false - for many people with disabilities, assistive technology is very humanizing, granting them autonomy and dignity in their lives. And for them, having a game mechanic of "this technology which makes you feel more human comes with a Faustian bargain" is hostile to them.
Honestly, there are a lot of badly thought out balancing mechanics built on stereotypes that need to be rethought.
I think that general idea is problematic for those reasons. On the other hand, that game mechanic isn't really meant for assistive tech restoring normal human-level ability, it's about going way beyond that into superhuman and non-human capability. If you could go out today and get your arm replaced with a gatling gun, that certainly is going to create a social stigma with most people you meet on the street, even if you personally never feel "less human" from it. And I've known a person in real life that was mildly weirded out by a someone with just a prosthetic hand. So in that sense, it's probably realistic even if it's not morally right. On the gripping hand, I think it's clunky to resolve philosophic issues with gameplay, so it'd probably be better to just drop it as a mechanic and save it for the fiction if they want to explore those prejudices.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I don't love the trade-off between magic and tech, honestly
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
Because it's not so much a trade. If having dermal plating or wired reflexes doesn't affect essence then every mage would probably pick them up, since they're not something you have to allocate resources to.
For a D&D analogy it's more like removing the costs of wearing Plate Armor and making it available to everyone than it is like taking a level dip in Fighter
Eh if it still costs points to get money to pay for the cyber gear that's points I can't put into my magic.
Perhaps if there was some required ability points, rather than just money, put into acquiring/using cyberware? I mean, with actual modern prostheses you still need to go through extensive physical therapy in order to use them. Why not have a skill that represents your ability to rewire your own brain to interface with cyberware?
Like, anyone can use cybernetics to get human-equivalent performance, but it takes dedicated practice to get better than that? And that practice not being put into spellcasting or shooting or... and thus a difference in stats?
Yeah, essentially.
Being able to punch through a wall requires training, even if your robot arm is providing most of the strength. Even if it's designed to flawlessly interface with a human body without significant amounts of PT, it's probably only designed to do that for normal human things, not popping a gun out of its secret compartment straight into your hand or redirecting its electrical output into a shocking grasp.
So instead of spending some time at the range or reading arcane tomes or whatever, you spend some time testing your limits, maybe rewiring a few things, running diagnostics and making sure that everything is working flawlessly before you're in a life or death situation.
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You're thinking of those dice bricks they sell for Warhammer and the like. 3x3x5 blocks of little d6s.
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- It's got fantasy and science together. Guns and swords! Hacking and fireballs! Cyborg elves!
- It's got megacorps, cyberpunkiness, and a general "Stick it to the man" theme going on
- It's Earth based, which makes it cool if you personally know some of the areas where Big Stuff(tm) happened
Can a competing product make do with just two? This is largely a question that came from me thinking if a Shadowrun-esque RPG would appear that's not based on our earth.
Personally I find the last part to be the least attractive part of the setting. What little entertainment I'd garner from speculative future geopolitics is heavily outweighed by all the icky stuff mapping fantasy races onto the real world gets you.
You can keep all the trappings of capitalist dystopia and 'earth' culture without having to set it there.
See also Modiphius' Roll20. We're playing Conan right now and I like the rules but they're just needlessly complex. Like, unnecessarily so. Why?
Probably for the same reason Star Trek, Conan and Infinify all have different d6 markings on their effect die: those games all got caught up in a weird cluster of being developed at the same time if I remember right.
Also they tried streamlining Shadowrun and honestly Anarchy is even less appealing to play because it’s still a mess but doesn’t have that morbid desire to dive into the mass of bullshit that normal shadowrun has.
I kinda want to start a group for rotating system and setting rpg one or two shot sessions online like every other weekend or something?
I think at this point the only way to save Shadowrun by streamlining it would be to burn the whole thing down and start building the system from scratch with simplicity as a core design principal.
And it can't involve people who have been involved in previous editions.
Realistically speaking, we'd just end up getting D&D: Shadowrun out of the deal, the worst of both worlds, but I can dream.
Like that’s a pretty basic system, and is very similar to the WoD/CoD system that I’ve been playing in for over a year. It’s just everything that gets layered on top of that, the way it is implemented, and the clunky and inconsistent nature of the rules that cause the problems.
Sad that I probably won't be able to find a group for it. Maybe I need to offer DMing for strangers?
Yeah, I think if you stripped some of the added chaff out, you could definitely make it a decent system.
My big move would be stripping down the equipment a lot. There's a ton of granularity in all of Shadowrun's equipment, and I'd want to turn that into like, six guns (pistol, assault rifle, sniper rifle, machine pistol, machine gun, taser). Which is the sort of thing we already see stuff like the HBS games.
In doing that, I'd also probably reduce a lot of the dice pool bonuses that various pieces of equipment give you, and in turn reduce the thresholds that you need to succeed on various skills. I think one of the big problems that Shadowrun ends up with is that it creates a way to get a dozen dice on any given role, and then feels the need to adjust thresholds for someone who takes all of the weird options to get there, making it hard to succeed if you aren't weirdly specialized. By reducing the massive pool of options, that would become much less of a thing.
I think you just do it like the video games, where Essence only affects your ability to channel magic. The tradeoff between magic and tech is a good one for gameplay, everything else about Essence yeeeaaaahhh not so much.
Like, isn't the whole point of Shadowrun that you have both? Why not allow characters who have both?
Because then every character will have both.
But even that I don't think is necessary, I think that it's all a part of the weird siloing of characters that Shadowrun is deadset on
I do wish that there was an inverse style of thing for Magic which again pitches the concept of how much you're willing to give up yourself in exchange.
Though the ableist angle is one I need to think on more.
First off, I doubt it. That's like saying that every D&D rogue will be a halfling, or whatever. People will make roleplaying decisions in a roleplaying game.
Second, why is that a problem? If someone wants to be a jack of those particular trades, why wouldn't you allow it?
Because it's not so much a trade. If having dermal plating or wired reflexes doesn't affect essence then every mage would probably pick them up, since they're not something you have to allocate resources to.
For a D&D analogy it's more like removing the costs of wearing Plate Armor and making it available to everyone than it is like taking a level dip in Fighter
Eh if it still costs points to get money to pay for the cyber gear that's points I can't put into my magic.
I'm not familiar enough with SR to know or understand how Essence works, but I do like the lore flavor of magic coming from the organics of a person, and the more cyber you are the less magic you can wield.
One of the core principles of cyberpunk (at least, from what I understand; I may be wrong) is that technology dehumanizes. To some extent, it's that it turns people into faceless cogs in capitalist, technologist distopias, and to some extent it's that replacing parts of your human fleshbag makes you less human in some way. Cyberpunk has a bunch of problematic tropes at its core, and that last bit certainly seems like one of them. Is there any value to it? I'm not sure I need "having a pacemaker makes you inhuman", but "having a bulletproof titanium torso and steel hands that can crush a wall changes how you perceive and relate to other people" seems like an interesting and worthwhile thing to explore.
Would there still need to be some balancing factor to make sure that players aren't walking around with 10 copies of every piece of available cyberware? What if "Essense loss" is renamed and recontextualized from "putting technology into your body takes away a certain je ne sais quoi of being human, until you're a mindless husk" and more towards something like "there's a limit to how much technology a body can handle, and past that the brain just can't incorporate its operation into its routine"? Is that still fraught in a way I don't see?
Or, would you just do away with any such limits, and if the player can afford some tech then they can go right ahead and stick it into their body?
Right, it's a balancing mechanic. The problem is that it's a shitty balancing mechanic that makes some questionable statements on the nature of humanity.
Perhaps if there was some required ability points, rather than just money, put into acquiring/using cyberware? I mean, with actual modern prostheses you still need to go through extensive physical therapy in order to use them. Why not have a skill that represents your ability to rewire your own brain to interface with cyberware?
The point that I've seen made by disability advocates on this is that the "technology dehumanizes" argument is just flat out false - for many people with disabilities, assistive technology is very humanizing, granting them autonomy and dignity in their lives. And for them, having a game mechanic of "this technology which makes you feel more human comes with a Faustian bargain" is hostile to them.
Honestly, there are a lot of badly thought out balancing mechanics built on stereotypes that need to be rethought.
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Like, anyone can use cybernetics to get human-equivalent performance, but it takes dedicated practice to get better than that? And that practice not being put into spellcasting or shooting or... and thus a difference in stats?
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I guess this gets pretty close to the line of "should athletes with prosthetic limbs be allowed to compete in the Olympics?".
I think that general idea is problematic for those reasons. On the other hand, that game mechanic isn't really meant for assistive tech restoring normal human-level ability, it's about going way beyond that into superhuman and non-human capability. If you could go out today and get your arm replaced with a gatling gun, that certainly is going to create a social stigma with most people you meet on the street, even if you personally never feel "less human" from it. And I've known a person in real life that was mildly weirded out by a someone with just a prosthetic hand. So in that sense, it's probably realistic even if it's not morally right. On the gripping hand, I think it's clunky to resolve philosophic issues with gameplay, so it'd probably be better to just drop it as a mechanic and save it for the fiction if they want to explore those prejudices.
Yeah, essentially.
Being able to punch through a wall requires training, even if your robot arm is providing most of the strength. Even if it's designed to flawlessly interface with a human body without significant amounts of PT, it's probably only designed to do that for normal human things, not popping a gun out of its secret compartment straight into your hand or redirecting its electrical output into a shocking grasp.
So instead of spending some time at the range or reading arcane tomes or whatever, you spend some time testing your limits, maybe rewiring a few things, running diagnostics and making sure that everything is working flawlessly before you're in a life or death situation.