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Gobbeldygook
May 13, 2009
Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

Put this racist on ignore immediately!

rumble in the bunghole posted:

I have no idea what the appeal of shadowrun is. The setting is a mess of stuff that doesn't work together and everyone hates the system. Is cyberpunk 2020 that bad?
Shadowrun 4e is a great system. The setting is reasonably consistent within an edition, you just need to remember that it has changed a lot from edition to edition. In earlier editions you were expected to be The Good Guys fighting The Man who was trying to pollute the world, bulldoze the community center, etc. Starting in 3rd there was very much a swing towards PCs being mercenaries.

Kavak posted:

What did Chastity and Abstinence give you?
Chastity gave a +4 perfection bonus on Will saving throws against charm and phantasm spells and effects, Abstinence gave a +4 perfection bonus on Fortitude saving throws against poisons and drugs (as long as you are subjected to a drug unwillingly).

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Count Chocula
Dec 25, 2011

WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN

Alien Rope Burn posted:

There's also a connection through the Hunting Grounds to the (presumably 1930s) Call of the Cthulhu setting in the adventure Adios A-Mi-Go! by F&F favorite John Wick.


Yep, that's a John Wick adventure, all right.

Has anyone here written a John Wick: The RPG by John Wick movie parody thing? Keanu's a member of a secret society of honorable assasins, he gets screwed over so bad by the GM the rear end in a top hat even kills his dog... somebody who hates Wick more than me could probably make it work. Anything to make the wait for John Wick 2 more tolerable.

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.

Kavak posted:

What did Chastity and Abstinence give you?

what Gobbeldygook said, but also keep in mind that to take any of the specific Vows, you also had to take the Sacred Vow feat first

so all of these things were a two-feat deep chain, and another one (Vow of Peace) required both Sacred Vow and Vow of Nonviolence

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Nuns with Guns posted:

what Gobbeldygook said, but also keep in mind that to take any of the specific Vows you also had to take the Sacred Vow feat first, so all of these things were a two-feat deep chain, and another one (Vow of Peace) required both Sacred Vow and Vow of Nonviolence

Because if there's one thing PCs need to be spending their 'I only get like 8 of these in 20 levels' resource on, it's small conditional bonuses!

E: Seriously the number 1 problem with Feats was never having any guideline of what a feat was worth, and the vast majority of them NOT designed with 'And remember a PC doesn't get many of these' in mind.

Night10194 fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Feb 5, 2017

Count Chocula
Dec 25, 2011

WE HAVE TO CONTROL OUR ENVIRONMENT
IF YOU SEE ME POSTING OUTSIDE OF THE AUSPOL THREAD PLEASE TELL ME THAT I'M MISSED AND TO START POSTING AGAIN


I dunno why, but videogames roguelike strategy game Invisible Inc makes me want to play Shadowrun. The whole game is laser-focused on infiltrating MegaCorps and stealing their data, with a wide variety of fun PCs.

That said, the two recent Shadowrun games are in my Steam library, I just haven't played them yet.

Count Chocula fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Feb 5, 2017

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.

Night10194 posted:

Because if there's one thing PCs need to be spending their 'I only get like 8 of these in 20 levels' resource on, it's small conditional bonuses!

E: Seriously the number 1 problem with Feats was never having any guideline of what a feat was worth, and the vast majority of them NOT designed with 'And remember a PC doesn't get many of these' in mind.

The Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exalted Deeds are both fascinating because of how they epitomize a lot of the mechanical problems with 3.0 and 3.5, and the hideousness of D&D morality as a whole when you try to address it "maturely". I've thought about covering them here, but I figured most people probably absorbed knowledge of the most hilarious bits already, since they are first party D&D books and all.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016

Nuns with Guns posted:

The Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exalted Deeds are both fascinating because of how they epitomize a lot of the mechanical problems with 3.0 and 3.5, and the hideousness of D&D morality as a whole when you try to address it "maturely". I've thought about covering them here, but I figured most people probably absorbed knowledge of the most hilarious bits already, since they are first party D&D books and all.

I only know them by reputation but I'm unfamiliar with whats actually in them. I personally would be interested.

Tulul
Oct 23, 2013

THAT SOUND WILL FOLLOW ME TO HELL.
I've actually been meaning to do these for a while, and this seems like as good a time as any.

The Book of Vile Darkness: Introduction

The BoVD was, no joke, the first D&D book and second RPG book I ever bought, not realizing that I probably should have stopped at Changeling: the Lost. I was 13 or so and probably impressed by the mature warning label and all of the tits strewn about in the art. I was fascinated by it and it launched me into the waters of D&D and, later, the broader RPG community.

Anyway, it's ten years later and boy howdy does this book suck. There are some relatively good parts, but overall, it's mostly just laughably juvenile both in general content and it's approach to morality. As Nuns with Guns points out, this book was, as far as I can tell, the sole work of Monte Cook, so it's nice that we know who to blame. Written in 2002 for D&D 3.0, it was (I believe) the first such product with a "Mature Audiences" sticker prominently displayed on the front. Wizards focused on this angle when pushing the book, including issues of Dragon and Dungeon with special, sealed sections featuring "mature" content (I'll cover these and other miscellaneous content at the end), that prompted a truly hilarious rant from Tracy Hickman, along with a number of other flame wars and arguments.

Later tonight, we'll cover how cutting yourself is evil, and the mechanical benefits of doing so. Take us away, Monte.

quote:

Let this be a warning: Book of Vile Darkness is intended for mature audiences. The topics covered herein are not for the immature, squeamish, or faint of heart. This book deals with fictional gore, extreme violence, human sacrifice, addiction, corrupt magic, and deviant behavior. Its content is not a lighthearted take on “badness”—it is about evil, pure and simple.

quote:

I do not condone, endorse, or seek to glorify anything in this book as it might relate to the real world. This is bad stuff, and I’m not a bad person. Really.

Tulul fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Feb 5, 2017

Crasical
Apr 22, 2014

GG!*
*GET GOOD


Shadowrun. Hooooeeee gently caress. Shadowrun.

This is going to be one of THOSE reviews.

I’m going to commit the only gaming sin worse than boring other nerds by rambling about your totally sweet player characters, and ramble about myself, and my history with the game. To start I’m going to be talking about one specific edition, the 4th edition (20th anniversary ed) of Shadowrun (at least for now), which is kind of the odd-man-out of the game line.

Relevant fact the first: I’m 27 years old. I was born in late 1989.
Relevant fact the second: I started playing shadowrun about 3 years ago (2014, for those of you who are math challenged).
This is odd for me writing this, because checking out the release dates, Shadowrun 5e was totally around when I first started exploring the game, but I remember it being released afterward, when I was already entrenched playing the fourth edition of the game. Trick of memory, I suppose, or maybe I preferred playing the game with a wealth of books and active groups playing rather than the (then) untested and untried new version. Or it might be that one of the huge factors for me deciding to actually join a group and try playing the game was 4chan’s /tg/ ‘Twodee’s Shadowrun Storytime’, which had used fourth edition.
Regardless, I went with Fourth Ed for my first forays into the game.

Anyway, per relevant fact #1, through no fault of my own, I pretty much missed the 80s. Shadowrun editions 1-3 where extremely eighties. 4th edition wasn’t just my hopping on point for the series, it’s also where the game shook off a lot of the grunge-rock motifs that (depending on your inclinations) might be a critical part of the game experience. I personally don’t have the taste for them. 4e dropped some of the cheesy runner slang (Frag, Slot, Drek being mostly replaced with actual cursing, ‘chummer’ becoming the japanese ‘Omae’) and a lot of the clunky old technology, replacing it with a tech level that is more believably 20-minutes-into-the-future. 2nd edition shadowrun has some of the best lorebooks, and the 2e cyberware book has a section I’m probably going to quote heavily from when it comes time to talk about cyberware because the fluff is just so good, but it also has ‘ware that:
A) puts a digital clock in your vision. That is all it does. It even appears when you close your eyes and makes it hard to sleep. Just buy a watch!
B) Is a fax machine implanted into your head. For sending and receiving faxes. Yes.

Fourth Edition got rid of that, gave a huge emphasis on a wireless world, smartphone-like mini-computers (commlinks) along with pervasive Augmented Reality rising up to become an alternative to the ‘jack in and go floppy/limp’ Virtual Reality. Space travel was touched on as occurring in the setting periphery as well as nanotech manufacturing and new, experimental nanotech augmentation. It paints a world that I find as scarily plausible to things we will have fifty or sixty years down the line. There are certain folks (likely on this very forum, indeed) who think that the world update from 3e to 4e made the world ‘Not Shadowrun’, or ‘Not Cyberpunk’, and instead ‘Transhuman garbage’. Considering that the game’s fifth edition is a ‘Throwback Edition’ in a lot of ways (Think of how 5e DnD is in a lot of ways a throwback to 3e), apparently at least some of the developers agreed with them. I don’t agree. When I talk about how much I love Shadowrun, a lot of that is SPECIFICALLY fourth edition SR, and I want to make that really clear before I start.

Shadowrun is a weird, clunky, crunchy, rules heavy game. It is, by a lot of standards, a bad game. It’s a game I personally have been running as a DM for about two years, and while I wouldn’t ever use the rules system for anything else, I also don’t think I would ever run Shadowrun using another rules system. It is also a large game. The ‘core’ books, by my consideration, tally out at 987 pages of content. For right now I’m going to just give the best lore overview I can of the setting before I start getting into all the mechanical clank and clunk of the corebook.

I hope by the time I’m done, you might understand a little bit of what people see in the game.

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

Crasical posted:

Fourth Edition got rid of that, gave a huge emphasis on a wireless world, smartphone-like mini-computers (commlinks) along with pervasive Augmented Reality rising up to become an alternative to the ‘jack in and go floppy/limp’ Virtual Reality. Space travel was touched on as occurring in the setting periphery as well as nanotech manufacturing and new, experimental nanotech augmentation. It paints a world that I find as scarily plausible to things we will have fifty or sixty years down the line. There are certain folks (likely on this very forum, indeed) who think that the world update from 3e to 4e made the world ‘Not Shadowrun’, or ‘Not Cyberpunk’, and instead ‘Transhuman garbage’. Considering that the game’s fifth edition is a ‘Throwback Edition’ in a lot of ways (Think of how 5e DnD is in a lot of ways a throwback to 3e), apparently at least some of the developers agreed with them. I don’t agree. When I talk about how much I love Shadowrun, a lot of that is SPECIFICALLY fourth edition SR, and I want to make that really clear before I start.

This is my experience with Shadowrun in a nutshell, complete with love of 4e, mess that it is. 5e's... really not my cup of tea, especially the editing, but the fluff choices and mechanical ones are flat out baffling in spots, IMHO. 4e's still a clunky mess, though.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016
So what changed between 4e and 5e that was so different? From my untrained eye all I saw was some minor mechanics updates, but I can't really parse the difference between either edition's mountain of rules or spot any significant fluff changes.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

Fossilized Rappy posted:

To explain, then, until very recently in the Shadowrun timeline Japan had an entire concentration camp island where they shipped off their metahuman population because they hate them that much.

For a moment I misremembered this was the Phillippines but it was a new volcanic island the Philippines rebels also liberated in 3rd edition. Yomi Island is pretty much the Shadowrun version of the one Nazi plan to drop all of the Jews on Madagascar and wash their hands of it.

Japan in Shadowrun is very odd tonally. They're an economic powerhouse but they're constantly invading their neighbors and doing crazy stuff like Yomi Island. It's like Japan in Man in the High Castle, they even took over San Francisco for a while, but nobody really acknowledges it, ever. Aztlan conversely is pretty bad but it's universally accepted they're a shithole, pariah state.

It should be noted as well, Aztlan did build the wall and paid for it.

EDIT:

LordAbaddon posted:

So what changed between 4e and 5e that was so different? From my untrained eye all I saw was some minor mechanics updates, but I can't really parse the difference between either edition's mountain of rules or spot any significant fluff changes.

Some people can detail the finer points with mechanics but they went backwards on decking, which had gone completely wireless with commlinks. It's not a complete 180, cyberdecks are wireless now, but they moved back in the previous direction.

RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Feb 5, 2017

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord
If I was reliable and not lazy, I'd do a concurrent review of Shadowrun 1e.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Some people can detail the finer points with mechanics but they went backwards on decking, which had gone completely wireless. It's not a complete 180 but they moved back in the previous direction.

What? That seems super dumb. What could possibly be gained by removing technology that the real world currently possesses from a supposedly near-future (ostensibly) cyberpunk setting?

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

It should be noted as well, Aztlan did build the wall and pay for it.

That was after Aztlan moved the borders from the Rio Grande to the Colorado River.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

LordAbaddon posted:

What? That seems super dumb. What could possibly be gained by removing technology that the real world currently possesses from a supposedly near-future (ostensibly) cyberpunk setting?

I went back and clarified but they brought back cyberdecks. I think it was mostly done for style reasons because I think grogs were upset that it wasn't "cyberpunk" for them.

Lynx Winters
May 1, 2003

Borderlawns: The Treehouse of Pandora

LordAbaddon posted:

What? That seems super dumb. What could possibly be gained by removing technology that the real world currently possesses from a supposedly near-future (ostensibly) cyberpunk setting?

Dollars from old men that hate change, mostly.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

I went back and clarified but they brought back cyberdecks. I think it was mostly done for style reasons because I think grogs were upset that it wasn't "cyberpunk" for them.
And cyberdecks in 5e are incredibly expensive. So if yours gets destroyed or lost, well, you're hosed.

AnEdgelord
Dec 12, 2016

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

I went back and clarified but they brought back cyberdecks. I think it was mostly done for style reasons because I think grogs were upset that it wasn't "cyberpunk" for them.

Those people are so stupid and wrong that I barely even know where to begin with that bullshit. Is there a way to put wireless stuff back in?

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy


Just for people curious about what North America looks like in Shadowrun and wasn't really aware of how it looked drawn out. This map is full of terrible decisions.

I'm pretty sure in previous material they go out of their way to stress that the Confederate American States is not a successor to the Confederacy and I think at one point the president is African American. Then in 4th edition they make the flag the same as the historical Confederacy but with those ugly points on the bars.

The Aztlan flag shown there comes out of the atlas supplement they made and I assumed the blood splatter was stylistic, Aztlan is very big on blood magic and human sacrifice. Nope, that's their flag.

EDIT:

The new cyberdecks are wireless but you have to be close to the thing you're hacking. That's how hacking works, you can't just hack someone in Omaha from Moscow or Shanghai. That would be broken and unrealistic.

RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Feb 5, 2017

Nuns with Guns
Jul 23, 2010

It's fine.
Don't worry about it.

Tulul posted:

I've actually been meaning to do these for a while, and this seems like as good a time as any.

The Book of Vile Darkness: Introduction

The BoVD was, no joke, the first D&D book and second RPG book I ever bought, not realizing that I probably should have stopped at Changeling: the Lost. I was 13 or so and probably impressed by the mature warning label and all of the tits strewn about in the art. I was fascinated by it and it launched me into the waters of D&D and, later, the broader RPG community.

Anyway, it's ten years later and boy howdy does this book suck. There are some relatively good parts, but overall, it's mostly just laughably juvenile both in general content and it's approach to morality. As Nuns with Guns points out, this book was, as far as I can tell, the sole work of Monte Cook, so it's nice that we know who to blame. Written in 2002 for D&D 3.0, it was (I believe) the first such product with a "Mature Audiences" sticker prominently displayed on the front. Wizards focused on this angle when pushing the book, including issues of Dragon and Dungeon with special, sealed sections featuring "mature" content (I'll cover these and other miscellaneous content at the end), that prompted a truly hilarious rant from Tracy Hickman, along with a number of other flame wars and arguments.

Later tonight, we'll cover how cutting yourself is evil, and the mechanical benefits of doing so. Take us away, Monte.

Awesome. Thanks for doing this!

Here are some fun facts:

Monte definitely did the writing. His BF 4 EVA Bruce Cordell was the Developer on it, so he might've helped with mechanics. Anyone who's been following my readthrough of The Strange knows they're both part of the triumvirate in charge of Monte Cook Games now. The entire BOVD project was overseen by Ed Stark, but I don't think he directly wrote anything.

One of my favorite tidbits on the book is the playtester section:

It's a pretty good capture of the D&D team at the shift from 3.0 to 3.5. The BOVD was one of the last 3.0 products. The Book of Exalted Deeds was one of the first 3.5 ones. Note that Monte Cook had his wife, Sue, playtest the Book of Vile Darkness.

Also if you post the Tracy Hickman rant, you should totally share the Paizo Rebutal. My favorite bit is this:

quote:

My own friends have asked me the age-old question, Was this coverage really
necessary? with the same rhetorical implication that they used to ask me
about violence in video games. They believe the coverage wasn't necessary and
that violence in video games (and movies, television, comic books and books)
isnít necessary. Yet, the truth is that in order to be truly heroic, one has
to triumph over that which is truly evil. Can we, or even SHOULD we,
self-censor the world of role-playing so that the evil creatures and villains
that parties encounter seem less horrific than the monstrous winged minions
of an Osama bin Laden in real life? Part of the ageless appeal of The Lord of
the Rings trilogy is that the evil is so palpable that the overall triumph
offers hope whether against the backdrops of the rise of Nazi Germany when
many first encountered the books, the televised horrors of the Vietnam
Conflict when I encountered them, or the slaughter of innocents we remember
from 9/11/01. Even in the midst of horrific evil, it is the HOPE that counts.

If there is a value to publishing a guide to the atrocities and perversions
that put the VILE in EVIL, this is it: Evil CAN be defeated! A corollary to
that which is played out many times in D&D campaigns and fantasy literature
is that Evil is never really as strong as it looks.

That said, do we intend to make sealed sections a regular part of our
editorial content. No! In the same sense that R-rated movies don't usually
make as much money as PG-13 movies, we don't believe it would benefit our
sales or the hobby to focus on VILE subject matter all of the time. We will
only publish more of this material if it is in demand from the readers. Yet,
we insist that the ability to go out on a limb in subject matter keeps the
hobby fresh and alive. If nothing else, it gets us talking about values,
belief systems and shared social context. Such a dialogue cannot answer all
the questions, but it keeps us thinking and growing. I, for one, do not long
to return to the days of the comics code. I'm glad we can get a wider variety
of styles and subject matter than in the days when publishers were afraid to
go outside the lines, even for an issue or two."

Sincerely,
Johnny L. Wilson, President
Paizo Publishing, LLC

Keep in mind that Johnny Wilson is talking about how the Book of Vile Darkness is important, culturally, because we can't shy away from horrors covered in it since they are still relevant to real-world topics like 9/11. He posted this on September 18, 2002.

Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Feb 5, 2017

Crasical
Apr 22, 2014

GG!*
*GET GOOD

LordAbaddon posted:

So what changed between 4e and 5e that was so different? From my untrained eye all I saw was some minor mechanics updates, but I can't really parse the difference between either edition's mountain of rules or spot any significant fluff changes.

Overview from a hella biased someone who's better with 4e than 5e:
All nanotech stopped working because of an incurable global pandemic where nanotech could infect you with a fragmented AI, turning you into a 'headcase'. Nanotech is gone, this makes Cyberware more expensive and harder to make since you can't use nanites to fuse nerve endings to neural interface cyberware on the nano scale anymore.

Also, the corporations cracked down on the free, open matrix, implement Grid Overwatch Division (GOD) who can find you anywhere on the matrix and come smack you down if you do too much illegal internet poo poo, as well as generally revamping the (still wireless) matrix. This brings back Cyberdecks, which are extremely expensive specialized computers needed to crack in and even attempt to do the things that would bring GOD down on your head.

CFD (the headcase nanites) also basically cause a re-do of a classic Shadowrun plot, Bug City. I'll cover it in more detail later, but Insect Spirits are a type of weird spirit in shadowrun that Multiply-Consume-Expand-Repeat. They can range from horrible giant bug-human hybrids, giant insects, and, possibly worse, completely normal metahumans who've had their soul eaten and a bug nest in the hollow where it used to be.

Bug City was about being in Chicago, where the infection was thickest. The paranoia that someone who you know might have been replaced by something inhuman and dangerous who's serving these inscrutable bug spirit's goals while the city was slowly overrun with the things, locked off and quarantined by the military (and eventually sterilized via antimagic virus and tactical nuclear strike)
Boston Lockdown is about the paranoia of that someone who you know might have been replaced by something inhuman and dangerous who's serving these inscrutable AI fragment's goals, and it led to Boston being overrun with the things, locked off and quarantined by the military.

Hence why I consider 5e a 'throwback edition'. Bring back the old slang, bring back Deckers, bring back the good old feel of Bug City with this new CFD metaplot.

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

LordAbaddon posted:

Those people are so stupid and wrong that I barely even know where to begin with that bullshit. Is there a way to put wireless stuff back in?

Shadowrun 5e has no idea what it wants to be. There's also rules giving you bonuses for hooking your cyberware up to the cloud so your Wired Reflexes has extra processing power or such. Nevermind network lag and such. Also, the pricing is completely insanely inconsistent, supposedly from rumors I remember that the developers were fighting back and forth over what kind of edition it would be and couldn't consolidate on anything. Mostly jacking the prices powered up magic relative to tech, which is not something Shadowrun needed a lot of. (It's been years, I'm probably wrong on something.)

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:



Just for people curious about what North America looks like in Shadowrun and wasn't really aware of how it looked drawn out. This map is full of terrible decisions.

I'm pretty sure in previous material they go out of their way to stress that the Confederate American States is not a successor to the Confederacy and I think at one point the president is African American. Then in 4th edition they make the flag the same as the historical Confederacy but with those ugly points on the bars.

In fact, I believe they called them the Confederation of American States.

The California Free States flag wasn't a straight ripoff of the Rising Sun Flag, the rays were broken, IIRC.

Crasical posted:

CFD (the headcase nanites) also basically cause a re-do of a classic Shadowrun plot, Bug City. I'll cover it in more detail later, but Insect Spirits are a type of weird spirit in shadowrun that Multiply-Consume-Expand-Repeat. They can range from horrible giant bug-human hybrids, giant insects, and, possibly worse, completely normal metahumans who've had their soul eaten and a bug nest in the hollow where it used to be.

Bug City was about being in Chicago, where the infection was thickest. The paranoia that someone who you know might have been replaced by something inhuman and dangerous who's serving these inscrutable bug spirit's goals while the city was slowly overrun with the things, locked off and quarantined by the military (and eventually sterilized via antimagic virus and tactical nuclear strike)
Boston Lockdown is about the paranoia of that someone who you know might have been replaced by something inhuman and dangerous who's serving these inscrutable AI fragment's goals, and it led to Boston being overrun with the things, locked off and quarantined by the military.

Hence why I consider 5e a 'throwback edition'. Bring back the old slang, bring back Deckers, bring back the good old feel of Bug City with this new CFD metaplot.

That sounds more like Renraku Arcology: Shutdown, which was Third Edition. Bug City was Second Edition, although it had it's roots in Universal Brotherhood metaplot, which started in 1e.

Fun fact, Renraku Shutdown was a test run for some of the concepts that Adam Jury and Rob Boyle would work on in Eclipse Phase with the TITANs.

Young Freud fucked around with this message at 05:41 on Feb 5, 2017

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

Crasical posted:

Overview from a hella biased someone who's better with 4e than 5e:
All nanotech stopped working because of an incurable global pandemic where nanotech could infect you with a fragmented AI, turning you into a 'headcase'.
I'd love it if Shadowrun could come up with a new kind of enemy that wasn't bug spirits/shedim/nanobots possessing you.

Crasical posted:

Also, the corporations cracked down on the free, open matrix, implement Grid Overwatch Division (GOD) who can find you anywhere on the matrix and come smack you down if you do too much illegal internet poo poo, as well as generally revamping the (still wireless) matrix. This brings back Cyberdecks, which are extremely expensive specialized computers needed to crack in and even attempt to do the things that would bring GOD down on your head.
I remember the fluff around this being completely nuts, but I can't remember the details beyond a splatbook establishing nobody new how the new Matrix worked and you needed to send in deckers to do a hazard-pay worthy combat mission to fight the deep internet into creating a new website. Also, they made dual-focus builds that were Hacker/Riggers or such prohibitively expensive to make focused "Deckers" more special.

Angry Salami
Jul 27, 2013

Don't trust the skull.
I think it's nice of that UCAS country to make the Canadian elements so prominent on its flag, given how it's population must be overwhelmingly American with actual Canadians a tiny, tiny minority...

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
It was probably a term of our acquiescence.

And gently caress bug spirits.

Double-gently caress that GOD wank though. Seriously, that's over-controlling GM garbage.

RocknRollaAyatollah
Nov 26, 2008

Lipstick Apathy

Young Freud posted:

In fact, I believe they called them the Confederation of American States.

My mistake, it is the Confederation of American States, not the Confederate States of America. It's obvious though that they didn't see that much of a difference in the art department.

People always talk about how Shadowrun has a great setting and what I think people mean is that it's based on some great concepts. It's very much a game trapped in the legacy of previous editions and the era it originated from.

Gobbeldygook
May 13, 2009
Hates Native American people and tries to justify their genocides.

Put this racist on ignore immediately!

LordAbaddon posted:

So what changed between 4e and 5e that was so different? From my untrained eye all I saw was some minor mechanics updates, but I can't really parse the difference between either edition's mountain of rules or spot any significant fluff changes.
5e is a collection of random changes without any rhyme or reason except they tend to be changes that make grogs happy and settle pet scores of developers. For example, one long-running gun nut complaint about Shadowrun is that it refers to gun magazines as exclusively as 'clips'. In the 5E lexicon, it defines clip as meaning "a box magazine for a firearm" just to shut up gun nuts.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

gourdcaptain posted:

I remember the fluff around this being completely nuts, but I can't remember the details beyond a splatbook establishing nobody new how the new Matrix worked and you needed to send in deckers to do a hazard-pay worthy combat mission to fight the deep internet into creating a new website. Also, they made dual-focus builds that were Hacker/Riggers or such prohibitively expensive to make focused "Deckers" more special.

Which goddamn blew all the progression that previous editions had worked on. 4e Hackers felt like a natural evolution on Deckers and Riggers, considering that they had been building up that merger in the Rigger books. I remember reading in Rigger 2, I think, where they say site security system managers acted a lot like riggers, except immobile, that a rigger could pull all sorts of tricks with building security if they had something to break ICE with. It was an inevitability that those classes would be merged together.

Also, after last year, where we had people using botnets made of internet-connected refrigerators, DVRs, and security cameras to launch DDOS attacks that shut down the internet a few days before a big election, 4e's hacking was oddly prescient.

gourdcaptain
Nov 16, 2012

Young Freud posted:

Which goddamn blew all the progression that previous editions had worked on. 4e Hackers felt like a natural evolution on Deckers and Riggers, considering that they had been building up that merger in the Rigger books. I remember reading in Rigger 2, I think, where they say site security system managers acted a lot like riggers, except immobile, that a rigger could pull all sorts of tricks with building security if they had something to break ICE with. It was an inevitability that those classes would be merged together.

Also, after last year, where we had people using botnets made of internet-connected refrigerators, DVRs, and security cameras to launch DDOS attacks that shut down the internet a few days before a big election, 4e's hacking was oddly prescient.

The bit that shoves it over from just grogginess to completely weird is this is in the same edition that wants you to access internet giving off a signal while doing a stealth mission so you can operate gear as a free action or such.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry

rumble in the bunghole posted:

I have no idea what the appeal of shadowrun is. The setting is a mess of stuff that doesn't work together and everyone hates the system. Is cyberpunk 2020 that bad?

I love the setting and really like the 3e version. I also like 2020.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

I'm glad people are bringing these 4e -> 5e changes up. I'm going to be running 4e for one of my groups soon, and when I asked here about which version was the best one everyone suggested 4e but really didn't get into details.

Seriously, game designers, stop listening to the "this isn't the same game I played when I was 12" crowd.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

Gobbeldygook posted:

5e is a collection of random changes without any rhyme or reason except they tend to be changes that make grogs happy and settle pet scores of developers. For example, one long-running gun nut complaint about Shadowrun is that it refers to gun magazines as exclusively as 'clips'. In the 5E lexicon, it defines clip as meaning "a box magazine for a firearm" just to shut up gun nuts.

Wow, they couldn't just change that poo poo and call it a "mag", they actually had to waste a sentence to describe that.

Crasical
Apr 22, 2014

GG!*
*GET GOOD
My suggestion, if you don't have them already: Use Chummer/Chummergen, and Karmagen character making from Runner's Companion. Karmagen makes more-rounded characters, Chummergen helps with dealing with the clunk of making characters.

The Lore Bear
Jan 21, 2014

I don't know what to put here. Guys? GUYS?!

Bieeardo posted:

Double-gently caress that GOD wank though. Seriously, that's over-controlling GM garbage.

The worst part was that it didn't really change much about how matrix security worked from 4E, at least from what I noticed on a few shallow runs. So, they did this large fluff change, but other than re-splitting riggers and deckers due to prices alone, there's not much actual mechanical change.

Robindaybird
Aug 21, 2007

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

God drat it game designers, leave loving dixie in the god drat dust where it belongs.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Robindaybird posted:

God drat it game designers, leave loving dixie in the god drat dust where it belongs.

The Confederacy Was Goddamn Awful should be all that's written about them in RPGs.

That said I'd be down for an RPG where you fight them like you'd normally fight Nazis.

Zereth
Jul 9, 2003



RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

The Aztlan flag shown there comes out of the atlas supplement they made and I assumed the blood splatter was stylistic, Aztlan is very big on blood magic and human sacrifice. Nope, that's their flag.

I swear Atzlan is only there to make everybody else on the planet look better by comparison.

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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Doesn't 5e still have the people with brains that are basically wifi nodes that are also for some reason completely incompatable with being a magician because GAME BALANCE but are also mechanically terrible in every single conceivable way?

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