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By popular demand posted:It's the dice, so many dice, with sharp point and you have to walk on them with bleeding feet. Then the mage casts a spell and suddenly the fight is over. Edit: WHoops, suddenly new page.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:08
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imagine shadowrun but with d4s
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Oct 20, 2020 15:12
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they'd feel so bad to roll, too
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Oct 20, 2020 15:12
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Reminder: D&D used all those weird dice because they got a deal with a toy company who made them, there's no good reason for overly complex multi dice types roll systems.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:19
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90s Cringe Rock posted:imagine shadowrun but with d4s  Create your own minefield in the living room with just one RPG system.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:21
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JcDent posted:How far are we from System Totally And Demonstrably Shits Itself? Because gear and cyber talk makes want to play Shadowrun and I understand that it's a bad idea. Riggers were already mentioned. "Hey guys let's give one class five times more actions a round than everyone else, what's wrong with that?"
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Oct 20, 2020 15:46
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Like, I keep looking at all of the cyber stuff and it bores the ever loving poo poo out of me. It makes me actively want to go and have a nap.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:41
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Ithle01 posted:Riggers were already mentioned. Riggers are one of those things that have varied in power from edition to edition. Sometimes they're ridiculous, sometimes they have to use their actions to make drones do anything and they're not any stronger than someone with exra actions from wired reflexes.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:27
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A rigger coming after you with a drone swarm is pretty scary, they're operating in their niche with all their gear. They're also something there's a couple ways to deal with.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:35
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I could give a drat about the power level, I'm talking about dealing with a character who has a swarm of NPCs that each need to be handled on their own in a game system where every action is like three rolls or more.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:39
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A rigger's swarm adds more dice to the already crowded table so I'll say it's more terrifying than most enemies in shadowrun. Efb.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:40
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Josef bugman posted:Like, I keep looking at all of the cyber stuff and it bores the ever loving poo poo out of me. Different strokes. Cyberpunk is 50% gearporn.
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Oct 20, 2020 18:56
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JcDent posted:Different strokes. Cyberpunk is 50% gearporn. See this might be why I never really got into it as much as other fictional settings.
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Oct 20, 2020 23:34
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Shadowrun 5e Finishing the character. Now that gear’s over, we need to wrap everything up Contacts, Using our Karma and calculating our derived stats. At least in the proper order, because I forgot to talk about races. There’s 5 available races in the core. There’s others that pop up, like the popular Pixies, weird subspecies to optimize with, and something about AI and free spirits. Each race has different starting minimum and maximum stats, as well as a few minor benefits or drawbacks. > Humans are bog standard, with a flat 1-6 range in everything except Edge, which they get an extra point and increased cap. That’s a solid choice, but their main advantage is being cheaper than other options. >Elves have a lot going on narratively, but in game they have a boost to Agility and Charisma, two incredibly useful stats for a lot of different characters. You also get low light vision because its in DnD, but in this game costs about 500 bucks. Elves are probably the best choice if you aren’t sure what to take and could possibly care about those stats. Everyone out of game loving hates elves apparently. >Dwarves get a slightly reduced maximum for Reaction, a very useful attribute, but get more Body, Willpower and Strength. Extra body and willpower is always nice, strength is ok but you probably wouldn’t go out of your way for it. The Reaction penalty is annoying though: it makes you worse at initiative and Driving/Piloting. Dwarves make the worst riggers, so if you thought going heavy on hardware was a good fit, you’re better off with anyone else. You have thermal vision, extra dice on poison and toxin resistance, and 20% more lifestyle costs to get things converted to dwarf size. >Orcs get a nice boost to Body and Strength, at the cost of reduced maximums for Logic and Charisma. So yes, orcs are empirically dumber and less likeable than the more ‘Civilised’ races, which may justify the in-setting racism. Orcs make pretty good melee focused street samurai, but Elves are probably better anyway since agility is a better stat than strength and it’s not enough Body to make much difference. >Trolls are just More Orc: More physical stats, including a whopping 5-10 range on strength and Body, but penalties to agility and every mental stat but willpower. You also get free reach, a point of armor, and double the lifestyle costs since everything needs to be made troll-friendly. If you want to be a big bruiser, trolls are a good choice, but they’re worse at anything else. You want to be a troll hacker, rigger or wizard? You can, but you’ll be worse at it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfPIaEkDT_c this post is too loving long, take a break here with a Cyberdog. look how clearly you can see how much essence it lost Karma, the XP resource, is used for pretty much all advancement and a variety of upgrades, especially for wizards. Our baseline start is 25, which can change a bit if there’s leftovers from the positive and negative qualities. We get some free karma, equal to charisma times 3 to spend on contacts. Contacts are basically NPCs we know and can help us out: Each of them has 2 main stats: A Connection stat for their general power level, and a Loyalty stat for their trust in the runner and how likely they are to stick their neck out or gently caress you over for profit. We’re capped on 7 points per contact, so it can be tough. We vaguely remember the bit in the equipment section that talks about selling gear, so we invest in a fence with the max loyalty to sell stuff, and if we have anything spare up their Connection. Loyalty determines our cut and stops us from getting screwed, so it’s a no brainer for at least 1 party member. Anything spare goes into minor flavor stuff, or someone who can get us out of jail. There’s also a few other things we can spend it on right now, but they’re all for mages and technomancers and we don’t care. They get their own chapters. This is a good point to talk about advancing our characters. Or rather how you probably won’t. As a general rule, it costs five times the new rating of the attribute, or two times the desired level of a skill, in karma to advance. You also need to spend time practicing, which is determined by taking the desired rating and running it on the training rate table. Generally it’s 1 week per rating, quicker if you get a teacher or Teachsoft program. Once you get to 9 points in a stat, it takes two weeks per level of rating. Magic also has it’s own special advancement, we’ll get to that later. Karma can also be used to get qualities or remove bad ones, learn new spells or technomancer forms and create magical Foci. Those aren’t so bad pricewise. Ultimately, your main form of advancement is going to be Nuyen-based: Buying and stealing new gear, and getting more enhancements and replacing flesh and old chrome. Since we’re on the subject, I’ll talk about the rewards. The base unit of pay is 3000 nuyen, per runner. Successful negotiation gets an extra 100 per net hit on the price for each basic chunk. You then find the biggest dicepool the players directly encountered and divide it by 4 for the rough difficulty of the job, and add modifiers for general difficulty and risks, like getting outnumbered, getting outnumbered by guys who don’t suck, going up against packs of critters, spirits and notoriously dangerous things in the lore, doing the job super well and risking attention as a natural part of the run (rather than poo poo going south). Then multiply the baseline by that, and do a final modifer to increase the overall pay for real nasty work like assassination or helping oppress people, and reduce it if it was ethical and helped out the little guy. The suggested price for a super-hard job is 21000 nuyen. That’s really not going to get you anywhere near fancier gear. Just get into running your own organised crime instead of being a contractor. Karma works in a similar fashion: you get 2 for surviving and 2 for succeeding at all objectives and 1 for just some, and a bit more based on the largest dicepool encountered. More ethical work gives a big karma reward, and Cold-Hearted Bastard jobs give less. It’ll take roughly 5 runs to get a single stat increase if it’s at a pretty standard level for your characters important stat, which gives a whopping extra one in three chance for a success. At least with cash you can get it from other sources, karma is a slow crawl to even get started on advancing. Downtime doesn’t have an explicit timeframe or gamey phase, so everything is kinda kludgey anyway. Either way, you’ll probably never advance more than a couple points unless the game goes for ages and you don’t die. We spend our remaining karma on bumping up a couple skills or whatever, and then do some equations for our many derived stats. We mainly need to figure out our initiative: Reaction, plus intuition, plus an extra dice and all our augmentation bullshit. That’s if it’s just a regular fight though. There’s seperate initiatives for VR initiative (both hot and cold sim) and Astral Combat. We also derive our stun and physical health bars and how far into negatives we can go, and our inherent stat limits. There’s a seperate formula for each 3 standard limit, though most of everything is just gear so big whoop. Chummer takes care of this since we’re not stupid. And that’s a character! The advised timeframe is from an hour to a whole evening, and you’ll probably want to be familiar with a lot of the systems, especially if you’re not just a fighter. It also reccomends getting a spreadsheet. Normally I’d post some sort of evaluation here, but the section defies it. It simply is. You either enjoy loving around with the bits or find it an infuriating mess of jank and transactions that don’t feel great, rear end-covering and optimising against whatever’s going to get thrown at you. Its like getting hit in the balls: Really weird people like it despite being super painful. There’s also pregen characters! They’re mostly not great. A lot of them are impossible to make with the rules. It’s interesting to see all the weird, non-real, archetypes, like a Weapons Specialist. A bunch didn’t even max out a stat. You’d have to ask someone else who knows what they’re talking about to find out why. This post is already too loving long. Now that Jenny Spade is fully realised, she goes out to the street on a walk and a local ganger pulls a gun on her. Its Combat time! Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Oct 21, 2020 |
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Oct 21, 2020 04:16
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I don't understand why Shadowrun in specific is a system they can never get right. It's "cyberpunks plus some fantasy poo poo", most generic systems can do that.
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Oct 21, 2020 05:13
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I think it has the DnD problem where the player base is so married to the crunchiest parts of the game system that if you try to change it they'll revolt so you'll never get any major changes to the game or if you do they'll be reverted in the next edition (although dnd 5th actually has a fair amount of 4e in it, but covertly slipped in). Plus, getting people to agree to what needs changing and how to change it is never going to get coherent results. I imagine that if you put ten SR fans in a room and asked them what they'd like to change the most you'd hear about twenty different conflicting answers. Cyberpunk plus fantasy don't really combine well either in my opinion. You've got a lot of thematic conflict and a lot of systems conflicts too. People are going to argue about magic vs. tech vs. etc vs. etc. and the only way to get it all to fit is to cut and simplify, but anything you cut is going to make someone out there pissed off or make people cry out that you've made the game too generic and bland. Then there's the people who like that the game rewards system mastery and if you take their ability to make 'optimal' choices away they'll be upset.
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Oct 21, 2020 06:11
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Maxwell Lord posted:I don't understand why Shadowrun in specific is a system they can never get right. It's "cyberpunks plus some fantasy poo poo", most generic systems can do that. Reading this thread, I've come to the conclusion that no, they don't. Aside from the fact that Shadowrun seems to have more reverence for sacred cows than a Hindu fanatic, there's also the issue of crunchy systems being hard to get right, and the crunchier you get, the more insane stuff can become, as LatwPIAT and her experience with running Phoenix Command can attest. Josef bugman posted:See this might be why I never really got into it as much as other fictional settings. Look, it's the dystopian future past. If I can't get decked out to the nines in sweet gear that makes killing Orc Bezos easier, why even bother? The only issue here is that crunchy systems have few ways of rewarding having an AWOO Aerospace HP-12 with molybdenum-steel finish, Torgo grip, Trip-Site Flash-Lite Laser Strobo Combo Suit, Izmash BOG 75 smart UGL, Hi-Speed Stock, Grubb Holo-Sight (supplemement by canted iron sights, natch), and a triple-stack of BlakHak hollowpoints instead of going "ok, what does the Excel sheet say is the most efficient choice."
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Oct 21, 2020 06:11
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Part of the reason you see so much branded stuff in cyberpunk game catalogs is that consumer branding is an inextricable part of the literature that spawned it, though often the games unwittingly take it to the point of parody.
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Oct 21, 2020 06:18
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The gear list is a huge pile of crunchy nonsense for optimisers, but it isn't inherently a bad idea and compared to say, Cyberpunk 2020 early on, there's a reason to look at most options. It definitely needs an edit, like we don't need 5 different types of RFID chips, but it meets the design goals. The first issue is that the systems for anything more complex than a basic skill check are dogshit.
Wrestlepig fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Oct 21, 2020 |
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Oct 21, 2020 06:37
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Wrestlepig posted:The gear list is a huge pile of crunchy nonsense for optimisers, but it isn't inherently a bad idea and compared to say, Cyberpunk 2020 early on, there's a reason to look at most options. It definitely needs an edit, like we don't need 5 different types of RFID chips, but it meets the design goals. The first issue is that the systems for anything more complex than a basic skill check are dogshit. Not as bad as 6E.
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Oct 21, 2020 06:51
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I remember reading one sourcebook back in 2E. There was a target number of something like 23 to find a particular bit of kit. I just stared at it and said, 'You know? I don't have the math skills to figure out how many exploding sixes this is, and I'd bet that the writers don't either.' While I'm here, I'm an inveterate pervy elf fancier. That said? Shadowrun's can go loving hang. In the fiction that I'm familiar with (pre-Dunkelzahn for President), there are two major elven countries: both are racist as gently caress, and both at-least border on the fashy. At least one is hip-deep in ten thousand year old elves from the prequel game Earthdawn, and there's at least one book of adventures where the PCs are being used as pawns in a feud between two of them. It even has a sequel.
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Oct 21, 2020 07:10
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its not really mentioned in the book but I will note: Everything I've read about dunklezahn and his will is incredible
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Oct 21, 2020 07:48
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The Lone Badger posted:Not as bad as 6E. To be fair, 6E is supposedly so bad, people only talk about it in oblique references, because everything is broken in it.
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Oct 21, 2020 08:34
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JcDent posted:Look, it's the dystopian future past. If I can't get decked out to the nines in sweet gear that makes killing Orc Bezos easier, why even bother? The only issue here is that crunchy systems have few ways of rewarding having an AWOO Aerospace HP-12 with molybdenum-steel finish, Torgo grip, Trip-Site Flash-Lite Laser Strobo Combo Suit, Izmash BOG 75 smart UGL, Hi-Speed Stock, Grubb Holo-Sight (supplemement by canted iron sights, natch), and a triple-stack of BlakHak hollowpoints instead of going "ok, what does the Excel sheet say is the most efficient choice." I actually had difficulty reading the bit I italicised because my brain just slipped off of it. I think I might have a legit problem with reading. In all seriousness, I do understand that a lot of people really love this stuff and I would never want to take that away from them, but the whole process feels very... antithetical to the idea of stories that I would want to tell.
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Oct 21, 2020 09:32
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Night's Black Agents handles gear porn pretty well, I think: for the most part, gear doesn't actually do anything mechanically, but once per session if you have a high enough score in a tech-based skill, you, the player, can lovingly describe exactly how cool and unique your gear is and how that helps you in the moment, and you get a partial refresh of your ability pool for that skill. (For those not familiar with GUMSHOE, you have a pool of points for each skill that you spend for bonuses on the roll--which is normally a single d6 vs difficulty 4, and you normally only get to refresh your spent points when you take downtime, so being able to do it in an action scene is a pretty nice benefit.)
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Oct 21, 2020 09:51
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The problem with SR-style gear porn is that game designers rarely have the balancing skill (or perhaps inclination) to make those endless lists of guns into actual meaningful choices. Throw a few +1s and -1s at the statline at random, make up some little flavor quirk, repeat until you have 15 "different" assault rifles. The result of doing that is generally that a) it basically doesn't matter which you pick, since the differences are negligible, or b) there's an obvious best option (or a few tied for best) and not taking that one is handicapping yourself for no reason. e: Yeah, the irony is that, from a mechanical standpoint, a lot of the gear choices in SR effectively are just cool flavor text; you might as well pick based on how awesome the name is, or how it fits your character's style. But we need a giant two-page table of stats because ??? megane fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Oct 21, 2020 |
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Oct 21, 2020 09:57
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GimpInBlack posted:Night's Black Agents handles gear porn pretty well, I think: for the most part, gear doesn't actually do anything mechanically, but once per session if you have a high enough score in a tech-based skill, you, the player, can lovingly describe exactly how cool and unique your gear is and how that helps you in the moment, and you get a partial refresh of your ability pool for that skill. (For those not familiar with GUMSHOE, you have a pool of points for each skill that you spend for bonuses on the roll--which is normally a single d6 vs difficulty 4, and you normally only get to refresh your spent points when you take downtime, so being able to do it in an action scene is a pretty nice benefit.) Gear does do stuff in its regular form. Guns, for example, have damage ratings. And Technothriller Monologue is just... “As I fire one of its trademark bursts from the HK UMP, I take a deadened, existential solace from the soulless blankness of its polymer casing.” It's the best.
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Oct 21, 2020 10:05
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Josef bugman posted:I actually had difficulty reading the bit I italicised because my brain just slipped off of it. I think I might have a legit problem with reading. Then you are a happy man, because I'm sure good storygame cyberpunk action games exist - unlike the nonsense I care about. megane posted:a) it basically doesn't matter which you pick, since the differences are negligible Sadly enough, this is probably the most realistic thing. And the difference exists in real life because while we have a lot of ways to measure how good a rifle is (bullet velocity, shooting gelatine to see what shrapnels better, MoA at range, RoF, etc.) people can't really agree even then, and there are external issues (ammo availability, innertia, etc) that can eventually trump even that. Gay world communist peace will happen sooner than people settle on 9mm vs .45 ACP GimpInBlack posted:Night's Black Agents handles gear porn pretty well, I think: for the most part, gear doesn't actually do anything mechanically, but once per session if you have a high enough score in a tech-based skill, you, the player, can lovingly describe exactly how cool and unique your gear is I guess the once-per-session thing gets past the Always Be Stunting thing from Exalted. JcDent fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Oct 21, 2020 |
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Oct 21, 2020 10:41
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Wrestlepig posted:its not really mentioned in the book but I will note: Everything I've read about dunklezahn and his will is incredible Its basically a long list of potential plot hooks for GMs, and I agree it owns. Last time I played SR, we got some of our best gear by flying down to Mexico and kidnapping a couple Aztechnology blood mages and dropping those evil fucks off at Big D's magic institute. Pays way better than most runs, and you can feel good knowing you just removed a real piece of poo poo from magical society. Also, as the SR games will show you, there's some pretty interesting stuff you can throw at the PCs if they're not just into robbing one bunch of lovely capitalists for another bunch of lovely capitalists.
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Oct 21, 2020 12:33
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megane posted:e: Yeah, the irony is that, from a mechanical standpoint, a lot of the gear choices in SR effectively are just cool flavor text; you might as well pick based on how awesome the name is, or how it fits your character's style. But we need a giant two-page table of stats because ??? It fills page space, that's why. Christ, early Street Samurai catalogues were literally one page of fluff, facing page a big loving picture of *item* and a stat-line.
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Oct 21, 2020 14:11
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JcDent posted:To be fair, 6E is supposedly so bad, people only talk about it in oblique references, because everything is broken in it. There was a streaming group who tried it and they are all veteran gamers used to crunch and dropped the game a few episodes in. It was something watching them to be polite as they did a wrap-up video trying to explain their problems in a non hostile manner. The funny part was even when they thought of a fix it would break something else in 6E.
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Oct 21, 2020 14:14
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Bieeanshee posted:It fills page space, that's why. Christ, early Street Samurai catalogues were literally one page of fluff, facing page a big loving picture of *item* and a stat-line. That still shows up, one of the German SR5 books, coincidentally about new gear, have a really cool page spread that reads like an in-setting shopping catalogue. Frankly CGL should just hand over the SR license to Pegasus because they've given the line some amazing love. To the point they've rewritten broken rules in the original books. But sadly it's all in German so kinda limited user base. I did do a rough translation of parts of one of the books for my own group. No idea if that gdocs link is still being circulated or I finally got superseded by someone doing a better job at it. Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Oct 21, 2020 |
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Oct 21, 2020 14:22
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Never forget 'book full of new guns' used to sell well as a sourcebook.
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Oct 21, 2020 14:33
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Night10194 posted:Never forget 'book full of new guns' used to sell well as a sourcebook. I liked the old SR gear books from I think 2nd edition with the BBS-style conversations under each product, including barely-related tangents. Clearly, FASA predicted the internet's true form in 1993.
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Oct 21, 2020 14:35
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Honestly the BBS is some of the funniest bits of fluff in both the gamebooks and video games. I love the setting minus Fashy elves but that's in complete spite of the system.
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Oct 21, 2020 15:55
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JcDent posted:Sadly enough, this is probably the most realistic thing. And the difference exists in real life because while we have a lot of ways to measure how good a rifle is (bullet velocity, shooting gelatine to see what shrapnels better, MoA at range, RoF, etc.) people can't really agree even then, and there are external issues (ammo availability, innertia, etc) that can eventually trump even that. Even more to the point, a lot of goods are differentiated largely on aesthetics and ergonomics, neither of which is represented mechanically unless you start tracking individual finger lengths on your character to the 0.1mm scale. I’ve gone back and forth in my gaming career but ultimately have decided that for stuff like this, just have a mechanical HANDGUN item and skin it as whatever you want.
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Oct 21, 2020 17:43
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Midjack posted:Even more to the point, a lot of goods are differentiated largely on aesthetics and ergonomics, neither of which is represented mechanically unless you start tracking individual finger lengths on your character to the 0.1mm scale. I’ve gone back and forth in my gaming career but ultimately have decided that for stuff like this, just have a mechanical HANDGUN item and skin it as whatever you want. That's how we did it in FFG's Star Wars. "Blaster Pistol (stats) Models include: xxx, yyy, zzz". Half the fun was coming up with make/model names.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:35
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I think a good compromise would be having only three sub categories for each weapon type so you can have say, a small Holdout Pistol, a Standard Handgun and a big fuckoff Hand Cannon. That should provide decent variety in arms and equipment without endless charts.
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Oct 21, 2020 20:05
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By popular demand posted:I think a good compromise would be having only three sub categories for each weapon type so you can have say, a small Holdout Pistol, a Standard Handgun and a big fuckoff Hand Cannon. That should provide decent variety in arms and equipment without endless charts. Sure, and you can even do stuff like “high quality” to represent nicer parts, a scope, handloaded cartridges, etc that costs more and gives +1 to hit or whatever and it doesn’t get out of hand. The catalog happens when the authors forget they’re writing a game and just copy/paste their reference materials in. It’s true to the cyberpunk aesthetic but a waste of time for the game.
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Oct 21, 2020 20:11
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 21:53 |
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JcDent posted:Look, it's the dystopian future past. If I can't get decked out to the nines in sweet gear that makes killing Orc Bezos
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Oct 21, 2020 20:11
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