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Young Freud posted:I so hope whoever picks up the license doesn't release a 5th edition book. CGL simply put their name on the FanPro books, so I would like that situation. However, if it's the 20th Anniversary edition rebranded as 5th edition, I wouldn't mind that. I really don't want to rebuy the core and the Cyber, Magic, Rigger, and Weapons books again. Chances are 5th edition will be more like 3rd than 4th in terms of degree of change. 3rd edition material is so close to 2nd as to be interchangeable, whereas 4th edition material is incomprehensible gobbledygook vs 3rd. You'll probably be able to keep using the books you have with 5th as long as you remember the random gotcha changes they introduce.
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Apr 11, 2010 06:52
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Honestly, apart from PC AIs being feeble to the point of being almost unplayable, I don't have any real problems with 4e. That and I want my f'ing 6th World Almanac before another Edition's worth of core books, dammit 
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Apr 11, 2010 07:47
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404GoonNotFound posted:Honestly, apart from PC AIs being feeble to the point of being almost unplayable, I don't have any real problems with 4e. 6th world almanac is one of the books currently being partially rewritten by BattleTech writers because one of the writers of the Almanac said "gently caress you, I'm not even going to let you pretend you'll pay me some day." There's a non-trivial chance it will disappear down the same rabbit hole as Shadows of Latin America (note: That was specifically Steve Kenson's fault, not Fanpro).
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Apr 11, 2010 08:14
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Gobbeldygook posted:Sir, this is a sacred and holy place, never defile it with mention of the Runner's Companion again. That is the single worst Shadowrun supplement ever produced, even worse than Tir Na Nog. "If I drank, I would drink until I forgot that we published runner companion." On the SoLA front, a couple of freelancers released their stuff: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=29500&view=findpost&p=884618
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Apr 13, 2010 21:07
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Catalyst has apparently scraped together enough cash to pay for the writing in the books that have already been printed, so they're no longer pulled from the shelves. Makes me glad I didn't snap up a copy of anything on ebay.
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May 4, 2010 22:37
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Now, will they have enough cash to renew their license with Topps?
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May 5, 2010 04:28
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I'm legitimately curious why that should be the case re: runner's companion. All the new races to fit into things, general creep issues? The presence of pixies? Some third thing?
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May 5, 2010 05:29
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The Runner's Companion has a bunch of ill-thought out rules on a variety of topics, but most specifically the SURGE rules are an abomination because they put furries in SR. Oh, also playable shapeshifters are terrible, and playable AI make little sense and have an overly high BP cost to offset their lack of physical attributes. Many of the subraces have been in previous editions, but they were terrible then too.
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May 5, 2010 05:50
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Ahhh, well there we go. I'll not let an innocuous piece of nomenclature like 'unusual hair' throw me off the scent again. There are no words for my degree of disappointment in the AI stuff. That is what I would want to play, it makes sense in the setting, but oh god the horror of those rules. On the other hand, I am absolutely onboard with sasquatches.
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May 5, 2010 06:09
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Mage Ham posted:I'm legitimately curious why that should be the case re: runner's companion. Let's be clear: Runner's Companion sucks for reasons unrelated to shaking our fists at FURRRIES! It sucks because the writers suck. Let's start with the various metavariants. With one exception, every single one of them costs more BP than just buying up how that metatype is different with the SURGE rules in the companion, except you pay a premium. The explicit authorial intent is that this is a tax for being unique - except that's the exact opposite of how it works in the rest of the book. In the SURGE section, you are PAID points for having weird hair, a useless tail, etc. In the negative qualities section, there's a whole big discussion on how a 'distinctive style' is a negative downside and what that constitutes. It makes you wonder if anyone read the book before publication. So how about the other options? AI and free spirits are just completely worthless. In the case of free spirits, you contribute absolutely nothing to the group if there's already a magician who can summon spirits unless you're able to find some singular, freakishly-useful spell skill that leaves you as the ultimate one-trick pony. AI are simply non-functional in play. Dragons are not particularly good, but it's possible to take advantage of the writers' lovely, lovely design. You can buy the Latent Draconic Awakening quality for 5 BP, which magically turns into 120 karma worth of goodies at some point in the campaign. Unfortunately, you have to PAY for those goodies after you get them, so it really means you just don't get any karma for the rest of the campaign. This is great if it's fairly close to the end of the campaign since it means you get Real Ultimate Power for a while. The rest of the options are this bad or worse for PCs.
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May 5, 2010 07:49
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And that's why I always like to be near some individual who's good with maths whilst reading a new system over: I would, in all probability, not have gotten that. In fact I demonstrably didn't, since I played a Wakyambi last time I actually got down to rolling my block of D6s (admittedly it was still fun, but that owes a lot to the particulars and nothing to the high cost of tall-african-elfing). So, not only am I brought around to the prevailing opinion (a short journey), but I'm doubly horrified, since the book contains lots of things I would like, had they been done well: new metatypes! AIs! Customizable genetic variation! Cyborgs! Just all sorts of good, lovely things for a cyberpunk setting. Just all sorts of cliffs the actual execution jumps off of; at the bottom of the cliff, a shark awaits, hungry steel jaws a-snap, but lo! It clears the jump. Over the shark we go.
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May 5, 2010 08:00
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So... Shadowrun jumped the shark? Or something else? Yeah, you lost me.
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May 5, 2010 21:03
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MohawkSatan posted:So... Shadowrun jumped the shark? Or something else? Yeah, you lost me. That was the intended implication, yeah. In the cold light of day, it looks increasingly like a bad post, especially since I love Shadowrun.
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May 5, 2010 21:06
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I think he was pointing out that the last part of your post is completely baffling and defeats all attempts to riddle out its meaning I'm with you on loving shadowrun though. sweet setting, decent system, lot of cool ideas
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May 5, 2010 21:21
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Gobbeldygook posted:The rest of the options are this bad or worse for PCs. If you don't mind having the awakened super-AIDS, a lot of the HMHVV infected characters are incredibly BP efficient. (Even more so if you are a prick about it and just go out and get infected after creation, which takes no effort at all for some types.) The rules for them are still bizarre, though. Not being infectious actually gives you BP back (what?), which is important because the most prevalent strain is beyond zombie apocalypse virus level in terms of how easy it is to catch. The author of that part has admitted that he didn't understand that the 'contact' vector really means what it says in the SR rule set. But even if you had to contact bodily fluids, it's still more virulent and nasty than biowarfare agents designed to penetrate chemical protection, or the various VITAS strains that killed a bazillion people. The new rules also state that critters and infected whose magic stat drops to zero don't die, they just lose access to magical powers. So all the people/things that got killed by magic eating bacteria couldn't actually have been killed by it. eviltastic fucked around with this message at 08:18 on May 6, 2010 |
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May 6, 2010 08:15
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Wait, what? Isn't one of the FAB strains still lethal? Otherwise, how to explain the mass graves in Chicago when the city ghoul population got caught in the bacteria clouds?
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May 6, 2010 12:13
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Gobbeldygook posted:Let's be clear: Runner's Companion sucks for reasons unrelated to shaking our fists at FURRRIES! It sucks because the writers suck. Are the options really that bad? I admit I haven't spent much time with them, but the time I did spend involved statting a Drake Adept for a friend's oneshot, and the 65BP cost certainly seemed balanced for something that gives flight, a magic breath weapon, an inherently dual-natured Assault Cannon-class physical attack, and so forth. And shapeshifters IIRC get that ridiculous super-regeneration that as far as I know isn't replicable anywhere else and so would pretty much be worth any number of BP. (admittedly both those character's paled next to one with the custom martial arts, but that's because the onslaught rules are infinitely more stupidly breakable than I had ever imagined)
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May 6, 2010 14:57
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eviltastic posted:If you don't mind having the awakened super-AIDS, a lot of the HMHVV infected characters are incredibly BP efficient. (Even more so if you are a prick about it and just go out and get infected after creation, which takes no effort at all for some types.) I've been thinking about making a ghoul street samurai with cyberoptical replacement, orthoskin and hair implants to offset the make her look more human-looking (but not much), and eats the faces of those she's killed (originally, I thought of using her as some sort of a Tamanous repo man). A ghoul street sam is a powerful build. 420 eat humans everyday.
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May 6, 2010 15:03
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Tias posted:Wait, what? Isn't one of the FAB strains still lethal? If only RC had come out sooner! Catalyst Games, Tamir Grey's blood is on your hands! To be serious, it's an artifact of the character generation framework meshing poorly with something like getting infected, which gives you a brand new magic stat at some random point in your life. People who lose essence earlier in their life have huge benefits over those who don't, if you aren't also actually a mage/adept with an incentive to raise that magic stat. They had to do something to avoid weird results. A street sam with enough essence to survive losing a point becomes a lean, mean, face-eating machine, but a recently infected ghoul with no cyberware who goes out and buys cybereyes because of the whole losing his eyesight thing dies on the operating table from the magic loss. Or alternatively, a street sam with 1.5 points of essence has enough to survive the infection process, but then vanishes in a puff of logic because his maximum magic is zero. There's also the problem of at character generation vs. after - if you wanted to play a cybered ghoul, you either have to dump a bunch of points in a stat that's otherwise useless to you or you go out and get infected after creation at zero cost to you. I really don't think they meant to change how FAB works, but by RAW you can't kill an infected character by draining their magic stat. eviltastic fucked around with this message at 01:35 on May 7, 2010 |
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May 7, 2010 01:21
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So I'm pretty new to SR, and I'm involved in a game. Since most of the players (and the GM) didn't know the system well, we just took the pregenned characters from the main book and used those, except for the one guy who's played before and knew what he was doing. The party's a kind of face/tough guy, the gun adept from the book, and the technomancer from the book (who is my character). We've all liked the characters we choose, so we've kept using them. The problem is that I seem to be not completely effective at what I'm doing, or at least I am doing it wrong. Most of the advice I've gotten is of the "be a hacker, lol" variety, and I like the flavor and feel of TMs. Is there anything I should be doing or looking for investing? Chances are my GM will let me move dots around on my sheet, especially since my last session was craptacularly bad.
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May 8, 2010 05:14
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Zweihander01 posted:The problem is that I seem to be not completely effective at what I'm doing, or at least I am doing it wrong. Most of the advice I've gotten is of the "be a hacker, lol" variety, and I like the flavor and feel of TMs. Is there anything I should be doing or looking for investing? Chances are my GM will let me move dots around on my sheet, especially since my last session was craptacularly bad. Since you're a technomancer, invest in drones. A technomancer is essentially the adept version of a hacker or drone rigger. Need to find out where the hostiles are hiding? Let an Eye-Spy fly or throw in a couple of iBalls. Need more firepower? Send in Roto-Drones with LMGs. Need more feet on the ground? Get a couple of Renraku Manservants and give them AK-97s. While you might be able to issue an couple orders per Action Turn, you can link them together and have them coordinate attacks (which comes in handy, because the drones will tend to have more action phases independently than your character).
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May 8, 2010 06:53
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Nick Buntline posted:Are the options really that bad? I admit I haven't spent much time with them, but the time I did spend involved statting a Drake Adept for a friend's oneshot, and the 65BP cost certainly seemed balanced for something that gives flight, a magic breath weapon, an inherently dual-natured Assault Cannon-class physical attack, and so forth. And shapeshifters IIRC get that ridiculous super-regeneration that as far as I know isn't replicable anywhere else and so would pretty much be worth any number of BP. The bonuses aren't even that good. In drake form, you're barely equivalent to a typical street samurai in terms of 'soaking up punishment' because you can't wear standard body armor and are stuck with just the +4 impact/ballistic from Hardened Armor and optimistically +4 body if you're a Common Drake. Flying is not a big deal because almost all of your meaningful opposition will have guns that they can shoot you with while you can annoy them with your breath (or incapacitate if you smartly picked Electricity for your breath type, or maybe not breath on them at all because your breath attack takes a separate skill). You can't use it to scout because you're a drake - Half the point of scouting is ruined if you're a gigantic flying lizard that everyone points and gapes at. Being really good at punching people in the face (or clawing them, as in this case) just isn't a very big deal in a metagame where physical adept gun bunnys routinely throw around 16+ dice pools twice per turn with base DVs of 9+. As for the regeneration possessed by others, it's very much a double-edged sword. It's an awesome ability, for sure, but being completely locked out of the cyberware/bioware game until you're able to acquire and afford deltaware is harsh. It can also be very weak depending on how your GM interprets the rules regarding called shots. quote:(Even more so if you are a prick about it and just go out and get infected after creation, which takes no effort at all for some types.) Any set of rules where the only possible use in play is in abusive edge cases is useless. All it results in is people who really like the flavor being disappointed at being useless in play and a handful of people furiously masturbating over OH OH OH OH OH GOD 14 STRENGTH OH BABY.
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May 9, 2010 12:50
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My first Shadowrun campaign fell apart a while ago because of timing conflicts, but everyone's still interested in it and wants to play. Instead of trying to salvage the last campaign, I'm thinking of doing a "reboot" and start out more slowly, now that everyone has a better understanding of how the game works (especially myself). I'm going to start with "On the Run" (I really regret not following the game ran here) and go into "Emergence." I was also suggested "Ghost Cartels" but I don't know much about it. I'm also thinking about getting "Seattle 2072" since I'm a huge sucker for lore, and it seems like the reviews of it are pretty positive. Any comments/suggestions? Also, is there anything else I should look out for? I'm not sure what's up with Catlyst these days, so I'm afraid I'm going to miss out of something for good. PunkBoy fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Jul 26, 2010 |
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Jul 26, 2010 21:32
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PunkBoy posted:Any comments/suggestions? Also, is there anything else I should look out for? I'm not sure what's up with Catlyst these days, so I'm afraid I'm going to miss out of something for good. First, do not buy any new books for the foreseeable future. When you buy books from Catalyst, you are putting money in the pockets of thieves. None of the people with creative input on the books will ever see any of your money. Buy used. I no longer recommend trying to run any SR modules at all, or even using them as significant inspiration. Their only use is as joke books. Every single one of them I've tried to run has resulted in me cursing the name of the author. The current one I am trying to run had such massive, gaping plot holes that the only way around them has been to tell my players to simply embrace the insanity and to not think about it too much. Catalyst' most recent module release, the Midnight series of modules, is an immortal elf wankfest. Enough said. --- Their all around villainy has resulted in a bunch of authors feeling OK releasing their unreleased material for free. Ancient History released a bunch of 4E material here, including PACKS. Most of Shadows of Latin America (A 3e book) has also now been released here.
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Jul 27, 2010 01:03
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Thank god for thread necromancy. I'm trying to get a game together with my old group. The campaign is set around infiltrating the ACHE, when I realized, that not a whole lot has been said about the ACHE. All I know is that it's the former Renraku Arcology, the five level shopping district is still opened, and the current residents are welfare recipients and essentially prisoners because the Seattle Metroplex doesn't want homeless people running around the city. I need to liven it up some more. I'm thinking about having them deal with a minor crimelord that's hassling them or smugglers to get weapons and the like, but I need some more influences or adventure tags to really sell it.
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Jul 27, 2010 02:50
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The upper floors are filled with the murderous machine remnants of a crazed AI god who wanted to Kill All Humans. These floors are still sealed because the machines are so murderous that it's usually prohibitively hazardous and expensive to clear out new ones. Not just killer robots, but nasty nano-tech, advanced AI-designed parts, viruses, etc. And I think it may have been "officially" closed off but the Renraku Arcology used to have extensive underground tunnels that connected directly with the rather large Orc Underground in Seattle (as well as the subway system). If you're GMing Shadowrun I'd hope you could figure out something to do with a decrepit and crime-filled warren of tunnels that is attached to tailor-made smuggling routes and access to extremely dangerous and dodgy future-tech.
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Jul 27, 2010 03:01
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LGD posted:The upper floors are filled with the murderous machine remnants of a crazed AI god who wanted to Kill All Humans. These floors are still sealed because the machines are so murderous that it's usually prohibitively hazardous and expensive to clear out new ones. Not just killer robots, but nasty nano-tech, advanced AI-designed parts, viruses, etc. And I think it may have been "officially" closed off but the Renraku Arcology used to have extensive underground tunnels that connected directly with the rather large Orc Underground in Seattle (as well as the subway system). I'm not going with the Deus remnants, as all that is handled by UCAS Army's "top men". The upper floors are essentially a big Area 51-style military base, with the rooftop aerodrome being used by the Army as an extension of Fort Lewis. The sealed upper floors and the UCAS controlling them do play a part of my campaign, but not much. My campaign is somewhat related to that, as the floors immediately below that are housing a black-ops squad under Governor Brackhaven, intimidating and assassinating Brackhaven's various metahuman opponents. The campaign centers around the players infiltrating the ACHE and exposing the operation, hopefully with lots of explosives and gunfire.
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Jul 27, 2010 03:10
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If that's the focus of the campaign you might want to play into it by having various radical metahuman rights factions (Sons of Sauron and the like) try to take advantage of the situation- using the series of unexplained "accidents" to radicalize or gain control over more mainstream metahuman rights organizations and sparking a nasty series of race riots inside the ACHE. That gives you political maneuvering, intrigue, and danger as the inside of the Arcology becomes increasingly armed and hostile. It also gives you a ton of potential hooks to get characters from outside the Arcology to the inside- arms deals and shady business (organlegging for example) that would get lost in the chaos for the amoral, requests to find missing relatives or defuse the situation for do-gooders, metahuman groups that suspect the Sons of Sauron or another radical faction of orchestrating the killings from inside the Arcology and want them investigated (a red herring obviously), violence spilling out into the city if they have law enforcement contacts, etc.
LGD fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Jul 27, 2010 |
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Jul 27, 2010 03:39
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I should avoid modules, huh?  I'm gonna need to do a lot of re-tweaking now...
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Jul 27, 2010 04:45
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My game fell apart as well. Seems like my gaming group can't really hold their poo poo together in any gaming world more complicated than Warhammer
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Jul 27, 2010 11:37
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Dunno, if you're talking about the one here, but I tried to keep up.
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Jul 27, 2010 16:43
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PunkBoy posted:Dunno, if you're talking about the one here, but I tried to keep up. As did I. We really need a shadowrun game here in TG that doesn't fall apart in 2 days.
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Jul 27, 2010 20:39
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I'd be down, but I got desillusioned and do two other games now :-/ If a SR game really got off the ground I'd be down as hell, but all the ones we've tried has a tendency to crack.
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Jul 27, 2010 22:01
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The goal is finding people that really want to play some shadowrun.
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Jul 28, 2010 04:01
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I really want to play some shadowrun but I loving hate pbp and have never used online software like maptools. that said as long as it's not pbp I'd be willing to sign up
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Jul 28, 2010 12:07
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As well as having people who really want to play Shadowrun, you need to have the mission start quickly too. Seems like alot of the games here get stuck in the Bar before they even get to steal the Macguffin or shoot a man in the face and rear end.
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Jul 29, 2010 03:18
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Young Freud posted:I so hope whoever picks up the license doesn't release a 5th edition book. CGL simply put their name on the FanPro books, so I would like that situation. However, if it's the 20th Anniversary edition rebranded as 5th edition, I wouldn't mind that. I really don't want to rebuy the core and the Cyber, Magic, Rigger, and Weapons books again. That is how they make money. They generally put out new editions about 5 years apart and re-do all the "essential" supplements. I haven't played in about 10 years, but I still keep up with what has been going on with the game. IMO they ruined the feel of the game by taking it out of 1980's idealized future to more current tech. Technomancers are basically mages with computers, which makes yet another class (Hackers/Deckers) worthless since Technomancers can do everything in the Matrix effortlessly. Runner's Companion screwed everything up, as others have said. Great, now I can make a Fomori Ghoul adept who gets a quality that reduces all magic spells by 1/2 force for resistance tests, plus natural starting Body of 10, plus a billion other perks. With almost zero negatives that matter, these alternatives have made the game more about abusing the rules than having fun. I remember when the biggest problem you had when creating a character was whether to get Dermal Plating of Wired Reflexes because they both took up so much essence.
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Aug 5, 2010 16:50
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Bigass Moth posted:Technomancers are basically mages with computers, which makes yet another class (Hackers/Deckers) worthless since Technomancers can do everything in the Matrix effortlessly. quote:Runner's Companion screwed everything up
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Aug 5, 2010 17:26
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Some things from RC are worthwhile: rules for infected were good since we already had them in SR3. Rules for Pixies and Centaurs are not good. Want a character who has insane mental stats, can fly, can be practically invisible at all times with no penalty, and is an incredibly small target? Finally, the pixie is yours. The karma generation system was good since we've had unofficial systems for years, but the implementation was awful (another Ancient History mistake). Metaraces were free under Karma Gen, which would drastically increase the amount of Trolls and Orks in the game since they have so many net benefits vs. hinderances. Like I said, for around 40 karma you can have a Fomori Ghoul troll who has base Body of 10 and Str of 9 right out of the gate, plus the overpowered Arcane Arrestor for free! Also, every skill you have can have a specilization for +2 dice for a measly 2 karma right out of the gate. Not a lot of proofing went into RC. It kills me that they have enough time to devote to countless sourcebooks about terrible Matrix rules, or unarmed combat rules, or whatever, yet they have never had satisfactory rules for basic things like Cyberlimbs. In 4th ed they have basically made it so cyberware is almost always inferior to bioware, and sometimes to standard off the rack gear (why buy cyberears w/ accessories when you can buy earbuds with the same accessories for 1/4 the cost?)
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Aug 5, 2010 17:43
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Bigass Moth posted:(why buy cyberears w/ accessories when you can buy earbuds with the same accessories for 1/4 the cost?) Because it is much harder to steal someone's implanted ear cyberware than a set of headphones? It is also readily apparent at a glance that you have earbuds/glasses or whatever, compared to cyberware which largely requires a scanner to detect such things.
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Aug 5, 2010 20:00
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