The Shadowrun Situation

[Stahlseele]

noo, but of course not . . x.x

[Username17]

The hell?

The first thing to remember is that Shadowrun's recoil system is and always has been pretty stupid. The "per bullet" penalty combined with recoil compensators that offset bullets one for one until they are overwhelmed creates a quite retarded dynamic where everyone tricks out their guns to fire in the preferred firing modes with no recoil limits at all. This in turn means that people fire heavy machine guns without a care in the world. It also means that machine pistols have much worse recoil profiles than assault cannons (because machine pistols have limited augmentations and assault cannons only fire one "bullet" at a time). It's stupid. And it has always been stupid.

So obviously, various suggestions have been made over the years to try to remedy the situation. My own suggestion involves setting strength scores to use firearms in different firing modes without penalty. Firing a big machine gun requires more strength, and firing on a faster firing mode increases the required strength even more. This makes sense, so obviously Jason Hardy cannot and will not do it.

Instead they decided to go after the problem from the narrow definition of the problem that people traditionally get precisely as much recoil compensation as their preferred firing mode can use (usually either exactly 1 or exactly 5) and then never actually suffer recoil penalties at all. So they devised a bullshit intertemporal accounting deal where you have to remember how many bullets you fired last combat round if you're going to fire more bullets this round. The result of course will be that characters take a couple of shots and then duck behind cover (resetting their bullet counter), which may or may not appeal to your sense of action movies, but will definitely not result in the intended result of people ever taking recoil penalties on their actions.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

So... nerf the mundanes (with firearms as Primary combat skill, and gear limits), and boost mages (cast faster)?

[Stahlseele]

that's been the direction for a long time, first adept run and now magicrun . .

[Rawbeard]

The current 'designers' like magic way to much. I prefer it as flavor, not the main dish. Incompetent fuckers.

[Stahlseele]

So, Cyberdecks are back.
So is the SR3 Initiative system.
Wonder what else they'll take.

[Seerow]

So, Cyberdecks are back.

Ugh. I hope this is just "deckers have bigger dedicated computers than your average commlink" and not "Yeah remember the wireless matrix? We're getting rid of that again"

[Rawbeard]

A new magical virus from the metaplane of bullshit disrups all WiFi. Done.

[Korgan0]

Christ, I hope not. I never played SR3, but I've heard enough horror stories about pre-WiFi hacking that it doesn't seem like a good idea.

[Stahlseele]

well, the mechanics were terribad, but then again, they are terribad for SR4 wireless too . .

[Copper Helm]

Yeah. I remember in Highschool we were strictly playing with homebrew rules when it came to the matrix. At the time I didn't get why, being a stupid teen and all, and I thought that it was kind of boring to reduce the Matrix to some dice throws, but now I know better. The only way to make VR work is to either make a very short sequence out of it or have it being a team effort. But even then it's playing around the issue that the Tron like matrix isn't a really good idea to begin with since it breaks the game's flow.

Hum. Not to be attention whoring or anything, although it is exactly that, but I made a prototype for a fan book for SR where I compiled the Paper dolls I was working on. I tried writing a "Jackpoint" discussion and I wonder what you guys think about it. My english isn't all that great, so if you could point if it sound stupid or something.

Link

[Ancient History]

<puts on Bitter Old Man Hat>

General feedback from CGL's recent releases suggests that the quality of their products has not noticeably improved from where it was when I left in terms of writing, editing, proofing, characterization, or rules - by all accounts Storm Front was pretty much a debacle from start to finish. I honestly haven't kept track of who's writing what now, but from what I'm hearing in this thread my hopes for the final product are not high - you don't need a rules genius for a new edition, but you do need a few people that are at least competent to handle what's already there before adding new stuff.

</doffs Bitter Old Man Hat>

[Stahlseele]

*nods*
wish you and frank were responsible for shadowrun stuff <.<

[sabs]

AH, the stuff got so much worse then when you were still writing. They went from not knowing most of the rules and background, to knowing none and making up crazy shit.

[Stahlseele]

AHs Fluff and Franks Crunch would pretty much make for an almost perfect game.

[Rawbeard]

No game is perfect, but those two have a good chance to make a game that is not stupid and actually works. That would be awesome.

[Stahlseele]

oh ye gods is Storm Front bad . .

[Korgan0]

Would someone mind giving a review/overview of Storm Front?

[ishy]

Isn't storm front neo-nazis?

[Username17]

Isn't storm front neo-nazis?

Storm Front is indeed the name of the modern Neo Nazis. It is a hate group that is inspired by the SS "Storm Troopers" who are generally agreed upon to have been among the worst people ever.

For reasons that don't make any sense to anyone, Catalyst decided to release a metaplot book which shared the same name as the most well known Neo Nazi hate group. It's a slightly worse idea than naming your book three words that all start with K and only a slightly less bad idea than putting the N word on your front cover.

The book itself is supposed to "wrap up a bunch of plots". And this being post-embezzlement scandal Catalyst, their idea of "wrapping up plots" is to have giant battles where high level characters kill each other for no particular reason. Basically, it's the Ultimate Showdown, but not even a little bit ironic. Because the authors are like twelve or something, and think that big fights between dragons and street samurai is "awesome".

-Username17

[squirrelloid]

So, I got like 50 pages into this thread, skipped to the end, and now I'm confused. How did CGL manage to retain control of Shadowrun after all the crazy and frankly criminal activity?

[Cochise]

For reasons that don't make any sense to anyone, Catalyst decided to release a metaplot book which shared the same name as the most well known Neo Nazi hate group.

Now come on Frank, it's not as if the term "storm front" is a perfectly normal term in meteorology and that in various forms of fiction a "storm" or its "storm front" are figures of speech that refer to upcoming somewhat cataclysmic events that happen to "end" the current state of affairs, which by your own words:

The book itself is supposed to "wrap up a bunch of plots".

... is what they're trying to do there.

So I'm willing to cut them some slack in terms of "bad choices" concerning the title ... maybe because the "Arbeit macht frei" incident has reminded me that some people will always aim for the deepest dung hole without thinking (or even caring) for what they're doing.

[Stahlseele]

Oh hey, Cochise, how did you stumble upon this one? o.O
i am right now reading Storm Front . . and my god, this is bad x.x

the only good things i can say about the book so far (page 150 of 200) are good artwork and Artfull Dodger and Sleeping with the Enemy are pretty good.
Even if the latter one basically confirms that Ancient Historys Ghoulapocalypse has started and vampires are actually basically everywhere . .

[Juton]

So, I got like 50 pages into this thread, skipped to the end, and now I'm confused. How did CGL manage to retain control of Shadowrun after all the crazy and frankly criminal activity?

They where probably the only party to make an offer to Topps for the tabletop license. Topps doesn't really care as long as it gets some profit.

[name_here]

The lawsuits got settled out of court. Topps apparently put CGL on some sort of probation and then promptly forgot to keep any track whatsoever of how the line is doing.