New around here? Register your SA Forums Account here!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Crasical posted:

I love Shadowrun to death, but I feel like I can't just let this pass. I did a bit of backstory research for a polish shadowrunner I was writing, and....


And they give stats for it, like it's a magic weapon.

Ah yes War!, the only book that my SR4 GM did not actually allow to use for his campaign. It's apparently a massive crapshoot of horribly implemented ideas and overpowered equipment.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

theironjef posted:

Sadly only the new classes (and even then not spy). What's the worst thing that could really happen to a fighter that falls in an OGL game, anyway.

They become an even worse monk because they've lost the ability to use their sword.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Halloween Jack posted:

You guys have a bit in there near the beginning where you've dubbed over yourselves for about 30 seconds. Maybe it's just Stitcher, though.

Yeah I noticed that as well on the mp3 version that I downloaded and was kind of confused about and just assume it was either a mistake or some kind of meta joke.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Terrible Opinions posted:

Well GATE is explicitly pro-military propaganda, and has the same level of artistic merit as Trump campaign commercials.

Which is a bit of a shame because I honestly like the basic concept of the series with Fantasy meeting Modern but the execution of it is just so bad.

chiasaur11 posted:

Killed the momentum, so Seed and 00 were more or less DOA when they finally got their shot.

Seed's biggest issue in my eyes was that it was just a retelling of the original storyline in a new timeline and that it went way overboard than its predecessor in making the main character the chosen one.
The fact that it also later spawned Destiny as a sequel doesn't help it much either because that thing was dire and pretty much ended my interest in the franchise.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

theironjef posted:

There's no doubt we'll get to it eventually (I'm pricing first edition right now), but incidentally I'm reading through Shadowrun Anarchy right now, just for fun. It is a weird book and I am of mixed opinion.

Yeah the more veteran players in the SR group I'm in has the same opinion of that book. Been meaning to read it myself for fun, but I got to the timeline in my first attempt and just closed that out of sheer disgust. Parts of it is really insufferably written.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007


Funny, I'm in a similar position. Started playing SR4 back in 2015 thanks to meeting a bunch of people via a /tg/ thread.
The reasoning behind going for 4th in our case is very similar, in this case it was also the GM being more experienced with the system.
Funny enough the only book the GM banned was WAR! A book which is the apex of one issue I have with SR4. It has far too many books that are practically useless and are just wishlist shopping catalogues.

quote:

4e dropped some of the cheesy runner slang (Frag, Slot, Drek being mostly replaced with actual cursing, ‘chummer’ becoming the japanese ‘Omae’)
Pretty sure Chummer was still a phrase being used in SR4, same with drek.

quote:

Shadowrun is a weird, clunky, crunchy, rules heavy game. It is, by a lot of standards, a bad game.
Eeyup, can't disagree with this. Parts of it feels clunky for the same of being clunky. Half of the players in the group, including me, took one glance at the Decker rules for 4th and just went "Nope".

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

This map is full of terrible decisions.

A lot of the world design is terrible decisions because the SR writers have this weird boner for things being balkanized and countries just being hacked up into tiny pieces for barely any reasons.

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.

Oh goddamn it. :doh:
That does remind me that I was really weird out during one session with how SR4 deals with weapon ranges when we found an HMG at one point and I looked at its stats to notice it got a dice penalty at the 81-250 meter range bracket. :confused:

Bieeardo posted:

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

Which is probably one of the reasons why the SR5 game that our group is planning to do some point later this year is going to be set in Vladivostok which apparently has low GOD presence based on what the GM has written up.

Crasical posted:

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.

If I didn't know about the Chummer program I wouldn't be playing Shadowrun. That's for sure. CH4 has some issues and I wish things from CH5 would be backported into it. But my god is that program a loving godsend.

gourdcaptain posted:

Yep. Technomancers are around and are more mechanically awful and unsupported in suppliments than ever.

From what I remember the latest Rigger book was pretty much a wet fart.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

hyphz posted:

From my brief experience running 4e, it's because of Hollywood hacking. Anything can be hacked at will, you don't have to hope or wait for a security hole, and only hackers themselves have the money or skills to run decent security software.

This means that anyone who isn't a decker can trivially have their commlink hacked and commlinks are the only computers anyone has. Even if their actual data is on a Nexus (server), their Commlink has permission to access it. Information theft becomes ridiculously easy. Even the sample adventures treated it as an elephant in the room, with most NPCs having no stats for their commlinks because the author didn't want to admit that they were essentially an open book. It felt totally ridiculous.

By the same metric a GM can majorly gently caress things up for players by pulling the same trick on them. Especially new players who haven't fully grasped precisely everything about SR being very very gear heavy. So all they do is grab your basic commlink and leave it at that instead of setting up a tripple redundant system or something like that. Then the GM just throws a couple of NPC Deckers at them to get them through their commlinks.
Thankfully I've been spared that through my SR4 experiences.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

hyphz posted:

What they seem to want to do is exciting code battles between black and white hat hackers in cyberspace, but wireless just makes it so easy for NPC hackers to gang up or attack while the PCs are distracted that the GM has to treat it as an elephant in the room.

That whole notion is not helped by the decking rules being what they are. I remember our very first run in the SR4 campaign involved the Decker hacking into a pair of cars to stop a convoy. My memory of the skype discussion between the GM and the guy playing the decker was that sounded like an absolute clusterfuck.
But somehow we managed to hack one of the cars and make it pancake against a truck on the opposite lane so go us I guess.

hyphz posted:

I lost it when our PC Sammy asked if he could go to a museum and get a Filofax to keep his contacts info in because it would be secure. He then used the cheapest commlink just for "talk and text" and if there was any sign of it being hacked, threw it on the floor and shot it, then bought another.

Hah brilliant. I should steal that for a future character.

Robindaybird posted:

and honestly, I do fell like the Harebrained Games are the best experience for the setting, so you're not fighting with the rules as I felt I'm doing when I try to play P&P of it.

The SRR games were my real gateway into the setting. I had listened to a couple of goon run campaign podcasts for it but that was it until I got Dragonfall and played through most of that and Hong Kong.
I'd love to see them approach the 2070's as well but probably not going to happen any time soon.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Doresh posted:

Though I can at least understand why they would hesitate, at least to a point. A more accurate hacker/decker/whatever wouldn't even have to be on the same continent as the rest of the party. He'd probably just interact with them through a rad drone.
Wait, that actually sounds kinda cool.

That is kind of why I've heard people suggest that deckers should just be relegated to an NPC or Contact instead. Because that'd avoid the thing of decking being a game within the game itself.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Doresh posted:

That's it: The drone is the player character. The decker is just the guy that does favors for you.

I probably would've just played a Rigger in that case. You can pretty much achieve the same thing there anyway.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Kurieg posted:

So presumably int his alternate universe the supreme court is staffed entirely by adorable dogs like in John Oliver's deepest fantasies?

Also Terrafirst! sounds like goddamn morons. "We'll prove that nuclear reactors are unsafe by explosively making a nuclear reactor unsafe!"

As my SR5 GM put it on Skype this week as he was pulling together lore for the SR: Vladivostok campaign he's going to run for us:

quote:

Man reading SR history is like reading a disabled child's view on geopolitics

PurpleXVI posted:

Jodorowsky is amazingly stupid, but also amazingly captivated by the idea that he's a genius, which means that he puts all of his creativity and energy into his remarkably dumb ideas. The end result is always something that's completely retarded, but also completely original, because no one else would put that much energy into idiocy.

I saw that documentary a month ago or something and its both an interesting but also incredibly self masturbatory at the same time. As fascination as the descent into madness was it became tiring after a while to hear everybody jerk off over it constantly with barely any measure of critique.
Also made the mistake of seeing it without subtitles. :doh:

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Kurieg posted:

I actually don't like the first movie

I actually watched the movie a month or so for real and kind of reached the same conclusion. My only real exposure to it prior had been scattered clips and the King of my Castle music video. Otherwise my major exposure to the GITS franchise had been SAC in this case. Something which might have coloured my opinion somewhat. But at the same time I prefer SAC much more over the original movie.
But I will still see the live-action one regardless.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Cythereal posted:

Or have Valkyrie again. The Secret World has a US military officer offhandedly mention that there's a carrier task force in the north Atlantic hunting a rampaging kraken. :black101:

Must've missed that line completely when I played.
Always wanted to run a TSW campaign but I could never really figure out what system to use for it that felt just right.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Kurieg posted:

I really like TSW I just wish the gear/difficulty curve was better tuned cause I hate almost dying every single pull while soloing just to force me to use potions.

Huh, never actually had that happen to me with any real frequency. I'm mostly wishing combat was a lot more interesting instead.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Kurieg posted:

I'm running elemental magic/shotgun and it happens to me with alarming frequency. I think I finished with Egypt before I finally got tired of it.

I guess it depends on the build. I ran with Chaos/Shotgun build for my second character that managed to get into Tokyo without too much issue. But then I figure it helped I got a bit carried by doing the Anniversary event a couple of times with a friend that gave me a ton of points so it might have tipped the scales a little.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Serf posted:

I still play off and on and I last ran Elementalism/Pistols, which was pretty fun. Man a Secret World RPG would be dope. The closest thing I can think of that replicates the combat would be like Feng Shui.

Yeah that does sound like a good contended for running a TSW campaign. I was stupidly enough considering 13th Age just for a brief second because I was plugging away at a World of Warcraft hack for it at the same time. I quickly realized how dumb that was. :v:

Serf posted:

The fact that TSW is inexplicably an MMO and not a single-player RPG is mind-blowing. It would have been 1000x better.

Yeah, once you hit the later areas that become more and more apparent. Especially when you do the Side Issue plots which just reeks of them desperately wanting to do a cRPG instead of an MMO considering how much plot is crammed into them.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

I assume that the whole VITAS & Friends thing was purely to depopulate the setting somewhat. Kind of like what RIFTs did with all their calamities. Even if there it was to introduce more of Wild Earth feeling.
Even if the Awakening in SR did something similar considering all the paracritters kicking around.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

wiegieman posted:

Seattle is where a lot of stuff is written, but Berlin is one of the famous settings. It's part corporate city-states, part coalition of anarchist collectives. Ireland has been taken over by Elves (kill all Elves).

Berlin is also famous because Germans for some reason loving love Shadowrun to the point there is content exclusively written for them.

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

I've run four decently long SR campaigns over the years and three of them ended up in Africa because I didn't want to deal with the stupidity of the base setting.

Funny you should say that, the second "season" of my Shadowrun 4e game that I'm playing in takes place in Lagos, Africa after season one took place in Richmond, Virginia.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Doresh posted:

Right, It hink it's either the number 2 or 3 over here.

I know both 4 and 5th edition got the same treatment with exclusive content.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Evil Mastermind posted:

Did they ever actually release Berlin or Hong Kong sourcebooks for Shadowrun 4e? As near as I've been able to find they didn't have a lot of GM-support books.

They did release a small Hong Kong soucebook for SR5 as a kickstarter backing reward from what I can remember.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Cinnamon Bear posted:

South Korea was/is very unstable last year/still with a president (daughter of the former dictator) and political party in thrall to a cult led by the daughter of the cult leader who corrupted the previous dictator, prompting the head of their intelligence service to make an assassination attempt that killed the president's mother. And political and financial favors were being traded to ensure communication with her ghost.

Yes that is crazy and difficult to explain.

You could've included that in the timeline for Shadowrun and no one would be any wiser.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

SirPhoebos posted:

One Chapter that isn't covered in Deathwatch is the Grey Knights. Instead FFG put them in a Dark Heresy book.

Probably because Grey Knights are not a Marine chapter per say not to mention part of a different Ordos. Deathwatch is under the purview of Ordo Xenos and mainly deal with aliens while GKs are somewhat part of Ordo Malleus and deal pretty much exclusively with daemons and nothing else.
They're also supposed to be a step above normal Marines, with being all Psykers as well.

efb somewhat.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

theironjef posted:

Let's do some pulp adventure wrapped in an enigma wrapped in mirrored sunglasses printed on old newspapers: The Secret of Zir'An.

Somewhat disappointed neither of you called it Secret of Zur-En-Arrh at some point.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

HerraS posted:

13th Age is the only D20 stab-monsters-and-take-their-stuff game I can bring myself to play or run anymore thanks to the streamlined rules and emphasis on playing cool fantasy heroes instead of Wizard #9762.

After having played in a 13A campaign for a couple of years I am inclined to agree. Playing in a D&D5 campaign now and I'm kinda irked by it at times. Even when I'm playing a wizard in this case.

Been wanting to run a Warcraft campaign using the 13A system myself and I even went as far as writing up icons, races and class changes for it. It's just that I've never GMed before and still just kinda balk at the prospect. Even if 13A is one those few rule systems I feel that I can get without too much issue.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Cease to Hope posted:

the racial leaders plus characters like arthas and azshara and the old gods collectively or individually are a good warcraft-style replacement for 13a's icons

Oh yeah, the hardest part in my case was just picking the right ones that would be more thematically fitting as the campaign I want to do is set around the first MMO release.
I just went with the major factions present around that time and added the option that using the faction leaders as icons was perfectly valid too.
Should be noted this really is the first time I've ever done homebrewing like this.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

The commentary about Backgrounds was surprisingly enlightening in my case to the point I might need to add a house rule about those in my campaign notes to let players get more points to put into them but also having a cap per background.
Just to prevent Batman syndrome and not punish those who want to have a wider spread of background.
If anything I am going to steal the names of the Magic backgrounds for the future. :D

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Night10194 posted:

Rogues are also notable for being monumentally, incredibly boring despite being the intended 'complex' martial class.

After having played a Rogue in a 13A campaign that lasted for a while all I can say is:
Yeeeaaaah, they kinda are.

The rogue power selection as you level decrease rapidly and after a while I just kinda forgot to pick a power whenever we got an increase because there really wasn't much I found worth picking.

Did some hilarious damage at times though which was fun. But the lacking range of options was a source of frustration.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Night10194 posted:

It's actually more that the game just gets kinda boring quickly, with combat that is still too complex to breeze through. It really doesn't help that they completely run out of ideas for powers as you level.

Yeah this is more my main issue in this case. I enjoyed 13A combat because it's neat and simple and because I'm an absolute moron when it comes to remembering rules. It was just the lack of options later on that was frustrating.
The rogue felt very front loaded with powers and options but then it just turned into very generic sounding powers.
Can't really say much for the other classes in this case though as I've only played one 13A campaign so far.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

First time I ever used a grid for D&D was when I played 4th edition online. Before that I don't think I've ever really had grids, or minis even, in the 3.5 games I've played.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

The more 13A updates I read the more doubts I have about the system and the less willing I feel like using it for whenever I can convince myself to actually run the Warcraft campaign.
Which is further confounded by the fact that the three current player character concepts are a Warrior, a Paladin and possibly a Druid.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Night10194 posted:

Every Rogue boils down to Bleeding Strike.

Yeah I got some good usage out of that one alongside Sure Cut. Although in hindsight I must've gotten it wrong because I usually went with Shadow walk as my opening move and then attacked from that with Sure Cut, which can't be done since it requires momentum from making damage. I think both me and the GM forgot about that after a while. :v
Bleeding strike I usually saved for major enemies.
But going through my character sheet I realize I barely even used half the attacks I've got written down. Just outright stopped using some of them.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Hostile V posted:

Alright I won't lie, I love the idea of failing a Con check and then accidentally living out several years as a human because you shapeshifted badly and forgot you were a dragon. Just waking up one morning next to your wife and realizing "poo poo I LEFT MY HOARD ALONE FOR LIKE SEVENTEEN YEARS".

Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Night10194 posted:

Magic Items in 13th Age suck. The whole 'Item influences' thing is the worst; one of the problems in D&D was often feeling like you were playing a carrier for a ton of magic baubles that did the real work. Having them directly influence you with fishmalk quirks is just irritatingly stupid.

Yeah. I don't think any of the players (including me) in the 13A campaign I played a while ago ever really bothered with their quirks as we got magical items.
It's not all that great of an idea.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

My only comment for the skullcopters is
:black101: Hatredcopter Hatredcopter Hatredcopter :black101:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9LOAdP9iIQ

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Kavak posted:

The pyramids in their original form were loving glorious.


(Best I could find, they were supposed to basically be blinding to look at)

Ancient Egyptian Weapon of Mass Destruction Distraction.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Alien Rope Burn posted:


"One of these days I'll get a D-Bee writeup!... not today, though..."

I'm not sure if his other gun can even work. It seems to missing a trigger all together.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

senrath posted:

Would you prefer Taserface?

Or Overkill.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Man, those dragons have a serious case of skin-wrapping/shrink-wrapping.

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

Young Freud posted:

poo poo, why couldn't WH40K had some sort of Skaven analog? Not talking about ratlings either.

It's a big universe so why shouldn't it?
But on a more serious note the 3rd edition codex has a line up of various less known aliens, including a Hrud with a rats tail poking out underneath its tattered robes. Which has led some to believe that they're the Skaven of 40k.
The Xenology book has shown that isn't really the case but that book seems to have a very tenuous canon state so are Hrud space skaven or giant fungus monsters with powers of time?


Covok posted:

Random question but when and why did Games Workshop forget that the setting of Warhammer 40K is meant as a joke?

Progress of time pretty much as old authors get replaced by new one that see the universe in a whole different light as their predecessors.
Aside from GW wanting to establish it as a very serious universe because they thought selling a setting that considers itself to be a joke rather hard to do.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Cooked Auto
Aug 4, 2007

So does that ship travel in FTL speeds or what because looking it up the Pleiades Cluster is 444 light years away from earth.
I find it hard to believe that they managed to pass that in five years. :v:

Also found it amusing how specific it was that exactly 5 million prisoners died once everything went Doom on the ship.

Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Jul 4, 2017

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5