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What's the story with the introductory box? I haven't seen any details on what it contains, and I am interested in a product that could actually introduce new players to the game because it is hard as hell with just one copy of the core rules.
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Aug 5, 2013 23:24
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Rutkowski posted:Yeah same here. Yeah, waiting for iOS release is what got me to break out my 3E book and start reading up on 5E, which got me to preoder the 5E book and starter set on Amazon.
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Aug 11, 2013 23:39
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ProfessorCirno posted:( Monowhips are pretty OP ) Until you have to use one while fighting on a giant trampoline. 
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Aug 12, 2013 00:55
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Martello posted:But in 4th Edition they already made it so the hacker (which is what hackers are called, deckers is a stupid word) needed to come with on a run. And everyone having commilinks with agents and poo poo was both realistic and cool and made for a lot of poo poo the hacker could do. I for one prefer the return to 1-3E style deckers and matrix stuff. I really disliked using the term hacker because I felt it demystified the setting and evoked images of 4chan script kiddies in Guy Fawkes masks instead of mirror-shaded Gibsonian console cowboys like Case. I think I just realized that I'm a Shadowrun grognard.
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Aug 13, 2013 19:51
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Martello posted:Yes. See, I felt trying to follow the march of culture and technology was dumb because Shadowrun had already become so divorced from reality that it might as well continue along with all the 80s cyberpunk stuff. We're, what, seven years from the event that gave corporations extraterritoriality? The awakening happened two years ago. The world of Shadowrun never went through 9/11 and all the political reactions to it. Trying to bring the setting more in line with our real world only highlights just how far the setting has drifted from our real world over the years. Don't get me wrong, I think our world is getting more and more disturbingly Gibsonian as the 21st Century rolls on, and I would love to have a cyberpunk RPG that reflects our world, but I don't think Shadowrun should be that game. I don't mind, instead I actually enjoy the science fiction side of Shadowrun being as anachronistic as the fantasy side.
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Aug 13, 2013 20:42
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CNN Sports Ticker posted:Everybody bites things every day, so I wouldn't worry about defaulting or anything like that. Definitely the reach penalty though. Thanks! Yeah, but the stuff you bite on an everyday basis usually isn't fighting back.
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Aug 14, 2013 03:53
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I was just joking.
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Aug 14, 2013 04:04
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Gyro mounted AK is the epitome of number crunching with no regard to how silly the final concept is.
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Aug 23, 2013 07:21
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It's really silly to compare a 1 in Shadowrun to a 3 in D&D because both are made up abstractions to serve game purposes and on top of that, the games describe them differently. Int 3 in D&D is just above animal intelligence- difficulty speaking and guaranteed illiteracy. Int 1 in Shadowrun is explicitly not stupid, just poor critical thinking skills. Int 1 can use the internet just fine, but will probably find itself frequenting Freep and the Blaze.
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Aug 24, 2013 20:31
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Bularin posted:4th was a lot cleaner After it was reprinted as the anniversary edition, sure, but 4E at launch was just as poorly edited as 5E. I prefer 5E because it recaptures some of the feel that I feel 4E lost in trying to make the world more plausibly futuristic.
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Oct 5, 2013 21:49
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It's weird. Shadowrun used to have a decent amount of optional rules to adjust lethality, difficulty, and complexity.
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Oct 12, 2013 06:22
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Gobbeldygook posted:Shadowrun has consistently aimed for something more than Hollywood realism Actually, I'd say that Hollywood realism is exactly what Shadowrun aims for: modern weapons are very lethal, but the protagonists have just enough moxie and skill to avoid most of that lethality. Those protagonists, by the way, are a disparate cast of talented criminal specialists who band together to plan and perform daring heists. That poo poo is Hollywood as gently caress man.
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Oct 19, 2013 20:18
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I have a hard time imagining someone punching a car so hard it stops. But I can see someone punching down on a car so hard that it does a full flip over that person and explodes behind him or her.
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Nov 20, 2013 07:48
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Deviant posted:This is for Shadowrun Returns? I think so. I am eagerly awaiting it coming out on my ipad sometime in May and being playable on my ipad sometime in July.
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Nov 22, 2013 22:00
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I figure there'd be goatherds in the more rundown parts of the sprawl, like Redmond or something.
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Nov 27, 2013 17:26
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dirtycajun posted:Skill wire or what have you so they can learn english Should just need a skilljack because that's a language skill not an active one. The skillwires are for when you want them to be able to shoot krime kannons.
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Nov 27, 2013 23:15
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Doc Dee posted:How much essence would a skilljack, skillwire, smartlink, and heavy weapons mount eat up? I guess an armed goat could stand to "suffer" from cyberpsychosis Man, goats are already huge loving jerks. Now you want to give one mental trauma and a gun? You, sir, get Shadowrun.
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Nov 27, 2013 23:58
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Yet they are the archetype lieutenants for organized crime.
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Dec 1, 2013 23:26
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Yeah, I'm in the camp that doesn't prefer mirrorshades or pink mohawks. Rather, I prefer mirror shades turning into pink mohawks.
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Dec 5, 2013 02:54
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Shadowrun is very much like AD&D in that the rules are bloated and convoluted that every group has their own set of houserules. These aren't even necessarily developed consciously, but often simply emerge from just trying to play the game.
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Dec 20, 2013 07:57
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Kai Tave posted:...the comment that Shadowrun is like AD&D is right on the nose because it's a game that seems largely assembled and reassembled through a combination of "feel" and "the way things have always been." Shadowrun really and honestly deserves to be worked on by someone willing to step back and reevaluate it as a game instead of someone who just wants to churn out another iteration of useless vehicle chase rules nobody uses. This is a really good development of my point. Like AD&D, it seems like the Shadowrun writers never sat down and discussed what Shadowrun is as a game . They clearly spent a lot of time discussing and modeling what should be in the game, but they seem to have never come to a consensus on what the central point of it all is. AD&D grew and bloated to the point where its point was unclear, but Shadowrun, a product of its era, came into being with all that bloat and vaguary baked in.
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Dec 22, 2013 07:09
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QuantumNinja posted:I don't think the books are all made poorly, I think it's just terrible quality control. My book's binding was shoddy, but the copy my friend bought, from the same shop, was perfectly fine. The binding seems pretty cheap and not up to the task of holding together 400+ pages. I don't think it'd be a problem if the book wasn't so long.
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Jan 17, 2014 02:12
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Doc Dee posted:It still sounds like a unique problem to me, honestly. How do you treat your books? How unique can it be when more than one person has had similar problems? I baby my books like you wouldn't believe. I use bookmarks with cheap paperbacks. I own many hardbound RPG books by many different publishers, and the binding of the 5E Shadowrun book is very cheap. Whether or not a cover is dinged up has no reflection on the binding's quality.
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Jan 18, 2014 04:42
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Doc Dee posted:Fair enough. Good for you. I am not being facetious. I wish I could say the same for my copy. 
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Jan 19, 2014 01:35
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KittyEmpress posted:Edit: Seriously, is there any real reason to keep the whole 80s style future aesthetic and plot as being an actual 'canon' thing besides grognards wanting it to stay around? Well, it's still fundamentally about 80s anxieties, and despite 25 years of development, its central pitch is still cyberpunk D&D. I mean, I could be a dick too and ask, "is there any real reason to update the tech in a science fantasy game except to appease nerds' desire for verisimilitude?" But that's being silly. Those 80s anxieties still exist today, even at the height of 4E, Shadowrun was still cyberpunk D&D, just a little more Bridge than Sprawl, and aside from the ironically archaic take on the internet, early cyberpunk is becoming an increasingly prescient and poignant genre. It turns out pink mohawks and ridiculous makeup are a great way to confuse facial recognition software.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:36
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KittyEmpress posted:Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about - I mean, updating the tech is obvious (because when most people think of sci-fi/cyberpunk they picture more advanced stuff than old Shadowrun does). I think old shadowrun stuff like pink mohawks work fine, but the idea that wireless went through a collapse, everything became wired again, then everything wired went through a collapse and now everthing is wireless agian is pointless. Ahh, my bad. Yeah, metaplot is pretty ridiculous in any setting, though in some it's justified by the fiction sales. But I doubt that's the case here.
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Nov 4, 2014 23:58
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Gort posted:How cyberpunk is it really if everyone plays characters who get paid many times more than the average? Johnny, Case, and Molly retire on piles of money (Molly does so three times). Mona becomes a rock star. Bobby builds his own supercomputer to hide in. Rydell and Chevette don't themselves get rich, but the embodied internet owes them huge. So pretty loving cyberpunk really.
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Nov 6, 2014 18:24
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Mr. Maltose posted:Johnny retires on huge piles of money but ends up doornail dead anyway. Making out like a bandit isn't a guarantee that you're safe or life isn't going to be poo poo again real soon. Very true. And Molly doesn't go back to work twice because she misses the life of a razor girl. And really, Bobby's later life doesn't sound all that appealing either. But the point is: getting paid huge bucks is very true to the genre.
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Nov 6, 2014 18:34
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Doc Dee posted:Weapon focus is specifically defined as a melee weapon. Since it doesn't fire projectiles. 
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Nov 11, 2014 02:28
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OB_Juan posted:Watch Robocop, The Running Man, Total Recall, Blade Runner, Lawnmower Man, Heat, and Johnny Mnemonic. We can improve these lists. Don't watch Johnny. It's painfully 90s and embarassing for everyone involved. Read it instead, and while at it, also read "Burning Chrome" which is the titular story in the same collection. Do watch Strange Days and Elysium. Don't read Snow Crash. Stephenson had yet to learn the difference between exposition and rising action, and the novel really suffers for it. Instead, finish out the trilogies started with Neuromancer and Virtual Light. Also, while you're on that Gibson trip, go ahead and read his new one, The Peripheral. Also, consider reading DeLillo's Cosmopolis or watching the recent adaptation.
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Nov 15, 2014 18:18
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QuantumNinja posted:Let's be real, Gibson is a poo poo writer. His prose is stuffy, and all of his books have a half-dozen pointless subplots that don't matter and really only serve to convolute the plot for some half-assed attempt at deeper meaning. Literally half of his praise in the cyberpunk genre comes from his ability to make up cool-sounding cyberpunk words to describe futuretech. Neuromancer is good, but Count Zero is dangerously close to poor return on investment with an even more convoluted plot, and Mona Lisa Overdrive is almost masturbatory. His short stories, however, are too concise to become super-convoluted, so he's written a lot of great ones, including New Rose Hotel, The Winter Market, Dogfight, and of course Burning Chrome. The whole collection, really. Greg Egan's Axomatic is another great short-story collection, and it has a few cyberpunk stories interspersed. Nah, this isn't a very fair criticism, especially past the first trilogy. He can turn some elegant descriptions: the open to Neuromancer, Bobby's encounter with the ICE, the machines in the boneyard, Chevette's first view through the visor, etc. And like many authors, his prose becomes more smooth and natural as he goes. His plots aren't really convoluted. There may be as many as three or four threads, but he ties them all together in time for his climaxes. Those are sometimes a little disappointing after all the build up ( Spook Country is the big culprit here). Really, his biggest weakness is how he tends to recycle protagonists and antagonists. quote:On the movie front, some other to consider: The Warriors and Escape from New York for ganger vibes; Gattaca and Dredd (2012) for cyberpunk future; Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, for its thematic elements and the discussion about brain manipulation; anf The Getaway, Ronin, Snatch, and The Usual Suspects for "pulling jobs" examples. For television shows: Leverage, though goofy and not at all cyberpunk, is about a bunch of criminals pulling jobs; White Collar, for all its terrible characters and plot, also has several good Faceman crime examples; and Burn Notice, at least the first two or three seasons, has a pretty good "above the law" vibe. On the other hand, I agree with all of these recommendations.
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Nov 15, 2014 21:38
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OB_Juan posted:It's weird, but I think I like Gibson's Bridge trilogy better than the Molly trilogy, but yeah, probably read the both. Snowcrash might not be the most expertly written book in the world, but it's a fast read that has some really good moments. Also, I figured not going all-Gibson would be a good plan. I take it that The Peripheral is good? It's not weird. The Bridge books are way better, with tighter plotting, more sympathetic characters, and better prose all around. The Peripheral is great, his best work since All Tomorrow's Parties. Don't get me wrong about Johnny. I love it, but it's very mired in the aesthetics of its time.
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Nov 16, 2014 05:05
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The other thing to keep in mind is that the classic run against the megacorp is just one kind of job that runners do. The sources we were talking about last page or so contain all sorts of different situations, only a very few of which involve infiltrating a corporare compound. Add to those all the possibilities created by Shadowrun's fantasy angle.
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Nov 20, 2014 18:30
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Ronwayne posted:At some point cyberpunk just needs to drop the pretense and do warhammer 40k things like thousands of naked slaves loading a giant planet killing gun by pushing a turnstile. Thorshots are powered by gnomes running on hamster wheels somewhere. At this point, just add the demonic incursion in and start playing Mutant Chronicles.
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Apr 1, 2015 19:14
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SilverMike posted:Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily recommend Secrets of Power as high prose, but it did a good job getting me hooked on the Shadowrun setting as a kid. Secrets of Power is solid because it gives you a good tour of the setting and all its major bits (at least those bits circa 1E/early 2E).
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Feb 21, 2020 19:04
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I wonder what's more galling: Jordan Weissman stealing your stuff and mashing it with Tolkien or Mike Pondsmith stealing your stuff and then writing that its first rule is "style over substance."
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Jun 9, 2021 15:06
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Dawgstar posted:Pondsmith had read nothing of Gibson when Cyberpunk first dropped. He was more running off Blade Runner, possibly some 80's anime like Bubblegum Crisis and the novel Hard-Wired, the writer of which was one of the first playtesters. Ahh, allow me to revise then. PeterWeller posted:I wonder what's more galling: Jordan Weissman stealing your stuff and mashing it with Tolkien or Mike Pondsmith stealing your stuff second hand and then writing that its first rule is "style over substance." (And yes, I know Bladerunner's aesthetic informed the Sprawl novels' and not the other way around.)
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Jun 9, 2021 16:13
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Here's a good list: https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Samurai#Songs
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Jun 26, 2021 18:03
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Dawgstar posted:Well, it's based on a William Gibson novel so it's kind of a flat circle deal save 'add elves' I guess. The screenplay was even written by Gibson. And Shadowrun has never had anything as cool as the Navy getting dolphins hooked on heroin and one of those dolphins becoming a hacker.
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Dec 19, 2021 20:01
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SpaceDrake posted:See also: the utter obsession D&D3 had with statting out even major deities, and the Epic Level Handbook making it extremely practical to kill such beings. Along with things like "divine rank" having all sorts of statted-out effects (and even being a numeral itself). I remember hearing about a character built out to solo a number of these entities while in college. To be fair, AD&D 1 and 2E had books full of god stats too. D&D gods have always existed for two reasons: 1) explain where clerics get their spells, and 2) get chumped by high level PCs.
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Oct 25, 2023 16:11
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