[Shadowrun 5] On the playability of Matrix

[Zaranthan]

Don't fucking talk to silva.

[Username17]

Obviously anyone who says the Matrix in 5e is fast or looks fast or fucking anything along those lines is either lying or confused. The 5e Matrix requires tens of thousands of die rolls just to find out what devices are in range to be hacked. It is literally true that no human being has ever completed even a simple hacking scenario by the book. The thing is that even skipping, condensing, forgetting, and otherwise streamlining the rolls and action declarations, it's still clunky and slow.

Even if the GM arbitrarily allows you to target the most important device from the beginning (itself a violation of cause and effect), you're still talking about perceiving a device, marking a device, getting access to the device and only then getting it to actually do something. And all that is opposed tests and you're supposed to be hot swapping your deck's stats around to adjust your dicepools throughout. And there are choices and defense options at every stage. And there's GOD tracking the whole time for everything anyone does on either side.

Anyone who says that SR5 matrix rules are fast or simple is a liar or a fool. Now as it happens, we know for certain that silva is both of those things.

[silva]

So you praised the system before actually playing it? I don't think that's a very good idea.

I agree. It seems certain rules translate well from paper to play, though. But its not the case of Shadowrun 5th.

By the way, another potential problem we found out is the Aspected magicians. They seem really nerfed here, specially the spellcasting one, since they begin the game zero spells by default. If someone have a custom solution/house-rule for it, lemme know.

You do know, you probably did it wrong? If you posted the situation and what your hacker did, someone could tell you where...

Yeah its entirely possible that we didnt play it 100% correct, as its our first time playing it. We did it more or less like this..

0. legwork intel says target building has cheap matrix defense
1. group approach target building with their 'links silent and slaved to decker
2. local security technician rolls perception against decker and loses, thus staying oblivious to the team presence
2. decker scans wireless devices in AR, identifying 1 camera and 1 maglock on front door
3. decker "hack on the fly" both devices simultaneously (splitting his pool - but pumping it through Edge - and wins the opposed test against the sec technician) for a level 1 access in both devices.
4. decker freezes the camera and unlocks the door
5. team sneak in, surprise both guards, dominate them and get the package. Mission accomplished.

Please, if we got something wrong, Im all ears.

- - -

Also, we are already thinking about simplifying things even more by changing this:

A. instead of rolling opposed perception, have the decker do a "matrix sneaking test" only once and establish the hits as the threshold for detection.
B. instead of rolling for target devices defense, assume an average of its dice pool/3 and establish it as a fixed threshold for the decker to beat (So ie: a rating 3 device defending with device*2, or 6, would simply present a threshold of 2 for the decker to surpass).

Both changes would speed up things even more, without messing with the game structure. Thoughts apreciated.

[Username17]

Silva is of course a liar and a fool. Actually speaking to him is pointless. He is an outed troll and a dishonest broker of information. He has no credibility or sincerity. Everything he says is almost certainly a lie, and all of his beliefs and positions are factually incorrect when they are not pure matters of taste. And his tastes are terrible, being the RPG consumption equivalent of a coprophage.

That being said, I think it's interesting to go through this thing to show how really really horrible the failure points of this piece of shit actually are. Consider: silva is describing possibly the simplest fucking thing in the whole damn world: sneak past the guards and unlock the door. In D&D that would be handled in 3 rolls. Under EotM rules, that would be handled in 4. In no sane game system would that be handled in more than 6.

0. legwork intel says target building has cheap matrix defense
1. group approach target building with their 'links silent and slaved to decker
2. local security technician rolls perception against decker and loses, thus staying oblivious to the team presence

First of all, obviously, whether you shit is "slaved" or not, it still physically has a matrix presence, and the security tech would get a perception against every single god damn wireless device device that every single player had in their hands, on their belts, behind their eyes, or up their asses. Every item that has the wireless bonus active can be spotted.

Secondly, the security technician can get an extra scan for every device that the intruders have for every device he has scanning. And that's going to be at least one device or he's not much of a security technician. And by "an extra scan" I mean "every single in-game second you get an extra scan" because such devices can and will do that.

So silva presents a one-roll perception test. Actually the game calls for dozens or hundreds of perception rolls. Every single initiative pass.

2. decker scans wireless devices in AR, identifying 1 camera and 1 maglock on front door

First of all: obviously the fact that silva noticed that scanning the maglock and the camera were separate means that on some level he realizes that the security tech would get a chance to spot the team's gas masks and wireless explosives and every other thing that has a wireless bonus.

Secondly, scanning for the camera and the maglock would also scan for every single other wireless device in range. That's going to include the security tech and all his shit, but it also includes all the lights, the cars out front, the mini-fridge in the breakroom, everything with an RFID, your mom, and literally thousands of other tools in the area.

But most importantly: scanning doesn't identify fucking anything. It just tells you what icons exist. Finding out what they really are requires you to examine them individually (which is an opposed test). Remember that there are thousands of these fucking things, but even if you were in a bizarre limbo with nothing but a maglock, a camera, and a security technician in his underoos, that's still like six icons that you have to spot check before you can do jack diddly. And let's be real here: a security technician probably has like two dozen icons going by himself. Every running program and wireless device gets its own icon.

3. decker "hack on the fly" both devices simultaneously (splitting his pool - but pumping it through Edge - and wins the opposed test against the sec technician) for a level 1 access in both devices.

I have honestly no idea why you'd care about marking both devices simulataneously if you hadn't rolled initiative. It's just a complex action. You could take a second one and do the other device.

Note however, that unless the security technician is a total jackass, he has a running count of how many marks all the devices he is protecting have. The fact that there is now an extra mark on the maglock and no plausible explanation for that means that the alarm is now raised, no die roll needed.

Also, you just took two sleaze actions and didn't check for GOD Handjobs.

4. decker freezes the camera and unlocks the door

These are two separate actions, and these actually are opposed tests. It's a Control Device action, see page 238. Also, that's two more sleaze actions and time to check for GOD Overwatch increases two more times.

5. team sneak in, surprise both guards, dominate them and get the package. Mission accomplished.

Please, if we got something wrong, Im all ears.

Infinity Mirror sinks this system instantly. You simply can't get past step 2 in this without hitting the wall of a hundred thousand perception tests. But it fails on the back end and in the middle as well. For all the fact that "Matrix Actions" take up six fucking pages in that fucking book, there actually isn't anything you can do to discretely hack into a device with an active observer that knows how many marks it is supposed to have. Just the fact that you added a mark gives the game away because you don't need to know anything at all about who is out there to get the raw number of marks that your own devices have. And of course, there's the whole Overwatch crap, which is an asstonne of accounting that kicks in all over the place.

-Username17

[silva]

Yeah, I see now where the matrix rules are flawed - in the perception tests. I think Ill be using my own "threshold-based" version. Much faster and fluid this way, and in-line with the rest of rules.

I still consider this the most playable version of the Matrix yet, by the way, not by the rules as exactly written, but by the tools provided to correct its flaws (like the threshold-based perception). But then, no sane group I know ever used Shadowrun rules exactly as written, so its no news here.

Thanks for your time in breaking it down step by step for me.

[silva]

More impressions after half a dozen games:

1. Dice inflation sucks. We feel we are playing too many dice. We miss the old SR2/3 days when we rolled less dice, and each one felt more important. Now one dice feels almost useless, and players are always reaching for constant min-maxing. I know target numbers are now fixed and this is a good thing, sure, but we definitely dont like this collateral-effected of dice inflation. Its hard to explain, but I feel that it was more meaningful in old editions when your average roll were 6 or 7 dice and then you managed to roll 10 or 11 for something you were really good, while now going from rolling 12 dice to 17 doesnt have the same effect at all. Now it feels Im playing a huge load of dice everytime and thats it. Sorry if I cant explain better.

2. Opposed rolls for everything sucks. Man, this makes the game stop to a crawl. I cant believe we played like this in the old days. Perhaps the contact with faster (and lighter ?) games thtough the years changed our tastes too much, but the fact is we cant tolerate the time wasted for rolling for all sides every time a test is called for. We are house-ruling that only the attacker/provoker party rolls, and we average the opposition/resisting party. Much faster and simpler this way.

3. I hate EDGE. Really, my group is formed by 3 players all with 5 edge each. At this point they simply succeed at everything I throw at them through edge. Fuck tactics, fuck opposition competence. The mage geeks every samurai by taking the Initiative (thgouh Edge) and by getting a dozen successes in its Ligthing spell (through Edge). The decker spots every threat device in the vicinity (through Edge) and hijacks any drones and sensors aroun (through Edge), while our face... well, you got the point. No matter if their plan is dumb or something, in the end they Edge-brute-force everything around. If Edge rolls didnt ignore Limits I would not complain, but as it is, I find it nonsensic. Its turning a supposedly cyberpunk game into superhero one.

Oh, and they are already cumulating karma to each increase their Edge to 6. Drek.


P.S: "The Matrix problem" as cited before simply vanished after we adopted the same sneaking concepts as the physical world (threshold based). And our decker is very happy that his actions flows nicely together with the other players. So no problem here, really.

[Stahlseele]

1.)
If somebody asks you how you would want shadowrun dice, the only correct answer is and always has been and probably for quite some time will be:
"By the bucket!"
But yes, in SR3 people had comparatively smaller dice pools usually, unless you had spent dozends of not hundreds of points of karma on a single thing.
And then they made that worse for some reason despite the stated design intent being rolling less dice by adding attribute and skill together for the dice pools . .

2.)
I think that is how it is supposed to be done in such a case as of SR4 as well. If you have an opposed test against a group, you take the highest or average(not actually sure here) of the group and use that for all in one go.

3.)
Again, this has been the case since SR4. Where the Mr.Lucky character concept first was introduced to shadowrun. Edge is basically the same as the Karma Pool had been in SR3. Only that you can start with your maximum in char gen and you had no maximum in SR3 but also started out with 1.
There is, aside from being very assholish about it, not much a GM can do about this, as far as i know. But somebody who is a bit firmer in the Crunch of SR4/5 may know of a solution that is not:"Gentleman-Agreement" or "Opposition all use edge every time always as well"

[Lokathor]

If the players have X amount of Edge, and you really want them to have to roll a difficult roll without edge, make them roll X+1 (or more) difficult rolls in a single adventure. Just make the adventure longer or whatever.

I dunno why it matters too much though, as long as everyone is otherwise having a good time and no one is outshining everyone else or whatever.

[pragma]

The rules also give the GM a lot of leeway in when edge refreshes. Unless there's a big disparity in the party edge scores you can always starve them by making it refresh per run or per week.

[Username17]

First off, Stahlseele, it's very weird that you continue to try to answer questions about editions you don't play and haven't read. That's very weird indeed.

Secondly, don't talk to silva as if he had a point or an honest question or even a real opinion. Because he doesn't. He's a liar. Also an idiot. Everything he says is wrong, but more importantly it is wrong in a dishonest way.

Let's consider his claims:

• SR4 Drools, SR5 Rules!
  That there are too many dice rolled on a test.
  That Edge is problematic because it lets players steamroll actions.
  That booting out the Matrix Perception tests makes the game playable.

These are wrong, but more importantly they are fractally wrong. silva is supporting SR5 over SR4, and one of the big differences is that SR5 has larger dice pools. For silva to say that dicepools are too big is for him to admit that his central thesis (that SR5 is good and SR4 is bad) is the opposite of the truth.

The second two claims are also reinforcing themselves in wrongness. Even if you disregard the literally thousands of die rolls that make up matrix perception, SR5 still calls for rolls for marking, accessing, controlling, and overwatch. If you actually did all the steps, you'd be out of Edge after hacking a single lock - even if there wasn't an enemy hacker, drone, or IC to force you to make additional tests that you by definition wouldn't have any Edge for.

The SR5 Matrix is completely unplayable because it calls for so many die rolls. And because it calls for so many die rolls, Edge is completely meaningless. So silva is stupid and wrong and lying. Again. Some more. Because that's all he ever does. That's all he ever is. silva is a lying liar who tells lies, and also a stupid idiot who is wrong about absolutely everything factual, and also a tasteless shit eater who likes things that are terrible and hates things that are good. Don't talk to silva as if he might have a point. He doesn't.

All statements about his own past and actions are lies. All of his beliefs about the factual realities that surround him are false. All of the things he likes are crap. All of them. He is the most impressively and consistently wrong person I have ever had the misfortune of talking to. And that includes people who get all their news from right wing talk radio.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

I have read most of SR4 and actually tried it once.
Been pretty long ago though, i will freely admit that.

Aside from the online bonus bullshit and limits and the going back to SR3 initiative and having cyberdecks . . SR5 looks to me like . . hmm, can't even say SR4.5, because that's already the 20A Version of SR4 . .

[Blade]

1. Agreed. When dice pools get bigger than the magical number seven (plus or minus two), you need to count dice at every roll, hence the noticeable change between SR2/3 and SR4/5.

2. A single opposition (attacker and defender both roll once) is okay. The two players roll at the same time, so there's little to no difference with a single roll. But when the defender rolls twice (such as dodge+soak) it slows things down significantly. This isn't new to SR5, though.

3. Stahlseele is right for this one: karma pool became problematic for the same reason in SR3 once it got high enough, high Edge had some problem in SR4, especially when the GM tries to cut down on the number of dice rolls, but since you had to buy Edge, many players bought up to 3 and rarely used them, so it was more controlled than SR5 where starting characters will often have high Edge scores.

These, and a few more, are the reason why I decided to create my own set of rules to play Shadowrun.

[silva]

The rules also give the GM a lot of leeway in when edge refreshes. Unless there's a big disparity in the party edge scores you can always starve them by making it refresh per run or per week.

We are refreshing it on a per-run basis.

If the players have X amount of Edge, and you really want them to have to roll a difficult roll without edge, make them roll X+1 (or more) difficult rolls in a single adventure. Just make the adventure longer or whatever.

Dont know, I find there is only so many critical "roll points" before game starts to drag. Specially in Shadowrun where (again) everything is opposed rolls and dodge and soak and initiatives each round, etc. and things can become boring fast.

See, in my experience (from the old SR2/3 days) there is not so much critical roll points if the team is doing the job in a cautiously way:

1. Find job (optional step)
2. Negotiate pay
3. Legwork
4. Infiltrate
5. Combat (optional step)
6. Exfiltrate

Our Face edge-rapes the first 3, the Decker edge-rapes 4, and the Combat Mage edge-rapes 5 and 6.

Thats 6 rolls. For a total team edge of 14. That means the team still has 8 Edge rolls left to eventual situations that arise. For the level of play they are in (Street), the opposition will have from 1 to 3 Edge pts to roll. Lets take 3. Considering they can roll this only from step 4 forward (when the run proper begins) that still lefts the team with Edge surplus.

Thats just a approximation, but it makes it more or less clear why they always get the advantage - they rarely have to rely just on their skills for the "critical rolls points", since they always have Edge available to help them. This is completely different from our experience with Karma Pool on older editions, where it felt more like a "last resource" thing and the general thought was "Damn, do I save my Karma Pool for helping the team on some point, or do I keep it to save my skin ?". Now with Edge it is "Nah, Ive got all the run critical rolls covered, and still have a bunch left. Lets go".

Got my point ?

I dunno why it matters too much though, as long as everyone is otherwise having a good time and no one is outshining everyone else or whatever.

Yep, fun is the goal after all. But we came in thinking the game would behave like a moderatedely verossimile action thriller like in the old days of SR2/3. What we found was a straight Supers game hiding in hi-tech trenchoat. So genre expectation is a thing here.

[Ice9]

Some of those steps would be a lot more than a single roll, I'd think. Combat, particularly, but infiltration as well, and even legwork is more like at least one roll per person investigating.

If you're changing the rules so that there are a lot less rolls, you may want to change Edge as well.

[Aryxbez]

What we found was a straight Supers game hiding in hi-tech trenchoat.

(sighs) This is so dumb, I have to respond to it. In Shadowrun, a stealthy game of great offense orientation, of course you may very well go through a run unscathed. Since the deadliness of the game means, if ye get shot, you're probably screwed, or not going to be looking all that hot if another chummer is around to do shot you as well. Taking this, further exacerbated by SR5's rules of having increased Weapon damage by 50% roughly, without also doing similar compensation for Soak in general. So yes, in 5th edition, if they're not pulling out the stops with edge like that, they're going to be vaporized by some punk with an Assault Rifle when looking down the barrel of 16 DV to soak (though all kinds of Power Armor shennagans I've heard about that makes ye either immune or vaporized).

Furthermore, Action hero thrillers also have their hero's doing stuff like this. Though often in those movies, they can run through a hail of bullets from a gallon of goons. Unless of course ye allow for some kind of "Group attack" that counts as one roll for all runners to dodge/soak, this isn't possible in Shadowrun so much, and they'll die to like 5 dudes with SMG's as well. So Current Shadowrun isn't a supers game, it may have a "Prime Runners" part that isn't fully supported, but is nowhere near disguised as such nonsense. That said, Shadowrun could benefit from embracing more of awesome from stuff like that, especially rules to accomodate "Prime Runner" play.

[silva]

Sorry if I wasnt clear there. I meant SR5 is feeling like Supers game in comparison to our old SR2/3 games, where we had a starting mage passing out from drain once, and a lot of runners deaths during our campaigns (and the Docwagon rescue team was busy as hell ). Now with all that Edge everything feels so... easy.

By the way, Im considering tweak Edge uses, so it dont break the Limits. Perhaps this way it feels less superherois for us. Ill be talking this out with the group.

[Aryxbez]

Sorry if I wasnt clear there.

All I can say, is to re-read what I just said above, it addressed what you said. Same can't be said for your post here, which is indication that you didn't read it fully.

However, I can say it looks like your Shadowrun game was ran more like D&D back in the day, with it being a comedy of errors. Which case, I don't think Three-Stooges was the intended tone of Shadowrun (though it definitely embraced wacky action antics apparently). It seems because ye were younger, and the rules more obtuse, easier for you guys to make sub-optimal characters. Nowadays with more unified mechanics, easier to build PC's the way you want to, albeit 5th is under all of the 4th editions doings (save for terrabad houserules they added that have existed as variant rules in the Runners companions).

Honestly Silva, your dislike of Edge really kinda comes off as a DM who wants to railroad (want to force Limits still in, and might be sign your players don't like those). It also seems your mission structure is perhaps too brief and simplistic. I would honestly get rid of Limits altogether, they have no "balance" justification, nor REALIZARM. It's just there to limit all the fun of those involved. Course then, ye may realize...why use SR5 at all if ye take out the one thing defining it over SR4?

[Orion]

Just tell players Edge is capped at 3. Honestly, I'd probably do that myself because edge is a huge bucket of free power for conjurers that no one else can benefit from nearly as much.

[Blade]

For my Shadowrun rules, Edge is lost when the character buys 1 point of magic or loses 1 point of Essence. So characters who rely more on magic, cyber or both can't benefit from Edge.

On the other hand, cyber and magic greatly improves character's abilities, so a magic/cybered character will be more efficient generally speaking, but the less magic/cybered character can have some bursts of power that allow them to do awesome stuff.

This suits cyberpunk fiction, where augmented characters are "superior" but non-augmented characters have this little spark that let them surpass them if only for an instant.

[Stahlseele]

@Blade
That is an idea i think sounds interesting.
Have you had any experience with it in game?

[Username17]

For fuck's sake, don't sugest more stupid house rules for this idiot. Remember in the actial rules the sample matrix conflict involves skipping a shit tonne of steps, and the decker still rolls dice fifteen times. And that's counting literally none of the resistance tests Spike has to make against Driver's actions, nor is it counting any of the die rolls by the gm or other characters.

silva is just fucking wrong. Loke he always is. About everything. He says the problem with edge is that hackers roll few enough distinct rolls that they can edge steamroller the entire run. SR5's actual edge problem is that hackers are called upon to roll so many die rolls to do even trivial shit that edge is meaningless.

silva is a Russian doll of wrong. He's wrong. But if you take his ideas apart you find out that underneath it all, he's also wrong.

-Username17

[silva]

Agree with Stahlseele. Blade idea sounds neat and genre appropriated.

But Im worried about the balance on creation. Ie: when would it be interesting for a player to pick Edge ? I understand the obvious answer is when he dont want neither magic or cyber, But what about the midterm ? I worry that it makes Edge completely irrelevant except for zero magic/cyber players.

Ie:

An aspected mage with 3 Magic. If I get priority E for Race, this means I will start with zero Edge. It will only begin to be advantageous if i get Race priority D or up. Right ? Then I can begin with 3 Magic and 2 Edge.

Also, I can see some players refusing to get small essence implants like datajacks or cybereyes to have 1 more Edge pt.

Hmmmm.. thats actually interesting, because it makes for a hard choice.

[Blade]

Well, in my case it's in the context of a very very different ruleset that's very deterministic. In that context Edge is not needed to counter bad luck mostly there to allow PC to disturb the status quo and succeed at actions they normally have no chance of succeeding at. So it's not a problem if a character has no Edge.

In these rules, PC don't buy Edge, they automatically start with 6 points, but they have to give an explanation for each point. The explanation has to be something that drives the PC forward or that helps him through hard times, it can be a passion for something, it can be hate, revenge, love, luck, spirits, etc.

The explanation will also decide how that point is recharged. For example, if it's love, the point will recharge when the user can spend time with his loved one(s), if it's spirits, the character will have to thank the spirits in a correct way in order to regain his point, if it's hate, the character will need something that fuels his hate, etc.

I also have optional rules so that implanted characters replace the meaning of lost Edge point with meanings that are related to their new augmented selves in order to portray their loss of humanity. Love can be replaced with "becoming stronger" in order to protect the loved ones.

Implanted can then buy back some Edge points with karma. They can either keep them as Edge point (meaning they were able to keep/regain their humanity despite their implants) or spend them for more ware (meaning they reject their humanity).

Likewise, mages are invited to tie each "lost" Edge point to a pillar of their belief. The more powerful a mage gets, the more entrenched in their beliefs they get.

[silva]

Wow, some really cool ideas there. I wish I could play in your game, man.

And as you mentioned it, my group also dont use Edge defensively/to save their skins, as we adopted a house-rule of swapping defensive/opposite rolls for auto-hits averaged on a 3:1 basis. So, ie: a 3 body 6 armor goon taking a shot automatically absorbs 3 damage. No dice roll needed.

Perhaps this also helps the feeling that Edge is overpowered - as Edge is not used for defensive purposes, its more available for offensive, and thus players can steamroll the opposition better and more frequently.

[Aryxbez]

Perhaps this also helps the feeling that Edge is overpowered

Depends what other houserules you have as well, but could be. As I've said above, SR5 is more deadly than the last edition, so if they don't use Edge in such a deterministic manner, they're going to get schooled by punks with assault rifles. Because now they only soak average hits, and all damage is above average, they end up taking more than the system is designed should they be struck. Off-hand I'm thinking at best, they'll only take like 3 boxes per shot from some weaker weapon like a pistol or SMG.

In my own Shadowrun experience, we 'streamrolled" opposite frequently all the time. Because to not do so, meant we would then start facing causalities super fast. This was true in SR4 as 5, and even SR4 +Frank Houserules (though since were Prime Runners at that point, some of us had ways to soak or dodge better, but can still get punked sadly). So, this whole bit Silva keeps mentioning is an issue, sounds like the game's default experience, and has been for many years.