[Shadowrun] Perfect Crime Edition {Frank Keep Out}

[Heisenberg]

Mods can move this to the Homebrew forum if desired, I just figured it would get more feedback and traffic here, and Frank's similar Ends of the Matrix thread is here.

Shadowrun: Perfect Crime Edition

Hello Gaming Den, you smallest, angriest, most brilliant corner of the gaming internets!

DOWNLOAD YOU THIS THING WHAT I MADE AND READ IT

Q: What is this?

Shadowrun: Perfect Crime Edition, currently taking the form of a 110+ page, ~50,000 word PDF that's free for you to download. It's a work in progress in terms of content, presentation, and formatting. Eventually, it will be a fully playable fan made edition of Shadowrun. Because it's a fanhack of SR4A, even when the rulebook is completed, you will probably still need a copy of SR4 or SR4A for reference occasionally to play it.

Q: This is pretty long. Is it finished?

Nope. This contains the Character Creation, Combat, and Magic chapters, each of which is pretty substantial. But I still need to do the all-important Matrix chapter, tackle Vehicle combat, do the "Running The Shadows" chapter, and so on. What I won't be doing is any flavor text or fluff chapters, no world history, etc. This is for people that know what Shadowrun is already.

Q: If this is incomplete, why are you releasing it?

Because I want feedback. 110+ Pages/~50,000 Words is a TON of work for one unpaid person to do in a complete vacuum. I need some back and forth, and while not exactly the most populous corner of the internet, the Den is a perfect sounding board.

Also, I want to demonstrate my seriousness with the sheer size of the project as it currently exists.

Q: Why do I gotta download a PDF? Why not just paste it into the thread like everyone else on the Den?

Unlike most Den homebrews, this was written all at once offline, not written by bits-and-pieces into a web browser. And in all seriousness, if I tried to paste this bajillion word document into forum posts format, I think it might break the internet. It would certainly break my brain. Just download it. It's not that hard. I promise!

Q: Hey, this looks a LOT like Shadowrun Fourth Edition.

Not a question, but you ARE right. It looks a lot like SR4 because it IS a lot like SR4. It's essentially SR4 with the brokenest parts fixed, and a few miscellaneous improvements here and there. If what I'm describing sounds vastly better than SR5, that's because it is.

The first step in creating these rules was sitting down with a Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition core rulebook, typing up pretty much everything inside into a document, and changing every single thing I didn't like/that was bad.

Q: Why on earth would you go to this much effort?

I have a LOT of free time on my hands. Also, I REALLY like Shadowrun. I REALLY was invested in Shadowrun Fourth Edition, but REALLY frustrated with the parts of it that sucked. Then Shadowrun Fifth Edition came out...and sucked infinitely more. I felt REALLY betrayed, but also CATALYZED. I thought... "you know, I could do a better job of fixing the flaws of SR4 and making a new edition of Shadowrun". So I did.

Q: Can you talk some more about those "brokenest parts" of SR4 you mentioned before?

* Character creation and build point costs therein were pretty badly imbalanced and in need of some serious tweaking. This has been addressed in SRPC.
* Direct combat spells, particularly non-lethal ones like stunbolt, were laughably, insanely overpowered in every way, enough to make nearly every other available combat option irrelevant or at least painfully suboptimal. Additionally, this contributed to the issue of spellcasters, in general, being overpowered compared to mundanes (AKA "MagicRun"). This has been addressed in SRPC.
* Some other combat options were stupidly obvious choices, enough so that every other selection was sub-optimal. I am talking here about Stick'n'Shock rounds, and electricity damage in general; everyone running around with stick'n'shock guns, non-conductivity being the most important item to take at character creation, etcetera. This has been addressed in SRPC.
* Other pieces of gear were badly and grotesquely imbalanced or virtually free dice for people who knew about them, giving them a leg up on those who didn't, i.e. emotitoys, etcetera. This will be addressed in SRPC.
* Combat movement was a mathematical nightmare, requiring you to add, multiply, and then divide when you did something as simple as sprinting. This has been addressed in SRPC.
* Mundane characters without cyberware or magical augmentation were left with only one initiative pass, twiddling their thumbs in combat while everyone else got a chance to play the game, and generally sucking ass. Batman and James Bond were not viable character concepts, because they weren't cyborgs, wizards, or adepts, and would have to take combat drugs to keep up with the party. This issue has been at least mitigated by SRPC.
* The Matrix and Vehicle Combat were both godawful, incomprehensible messes no one from the developers to the most dedicated players could actually figure out or understand. These issues haven't been addressed by SRPC yet, but they will be by the time it's finished.

Q: Well what exactly is your issue with SR5?

Oh boy. I don't even know where to start with that one.

Q: I found a (million) typo(s)!
Well, I did say it was a work in progress, didn't I? Please report any and all typos, incomplete sentences, and grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors here, including a page reference. I will try to make sure they all get corrected by the final document, even though it's not my #1 top priority, I do care about presentation.

Q: What does Page XX mean? Which page is that? It sure seems to have an awful lot of information.

It's layout shorthand, a note to myself to insert an appropriate page number reference when I find the time to make this document presentable.

Q: I really fucking hate this (rule/mechanic/change from SR4/stat block) you came up with. It's awful and your should die in a tire fire with your whole family.

Thanks for keeping your criticism classy and constructive!

In all seriousness, I am hoping for some serious feedback and (constructive) criticism. That's a big part of why I'm posting this here.

The flip side of this coin, though, is that nearly every change from SR4/new or refined mechanic had quite a bit of thought and reasoning behind it. Every change I've made from the SR4 rules was made for a reason or for numerous reasons. So while I will happily consider all feedback, critique, and arguments, on occasion I may challenge some feedback or offer some push back on some suggestions.

Q: Are you going to post this on (Dumpshock/Official SR Forums/Other Website)?

Not yet. Not until it's finished. The Den will hopefully serve as my initial source of feedback and data. I want to keep this under wraps from the broader public until it's done cooking.

Q: Can I start playing this now with my group?

I suppose you could, and actual playtest feedback would be invaluable to me. However, I'd request you wait until I finish the Matrix rules, since they are the main reason I set about making this fanhack in the first place, and I haven't gotten around to them yet, having left them for (nearly) last.

[OgreBattle]

You going to fill it with artwork too?

[fectin]

You might get better feedback if you discuss, even briefly, what you were trying to do with this. If you ask "what do you think?" that's pretty open ended, but "does it accomplish _____?" is easier to evaluate and more likely to get you useful info.

[Longes]

You might get better feedback if you discuss, even briefly, what you were trying to do with this. If you ask "what do you think?" that's pretty open ended, but "does it accomplish _____?" is easier to evaluate and more likely to get you useful info.

Q: Hey, this looks a LOT like Shadowrun Fourth Edition.

Not a question, but you ARE right. It looks a lot like SR4 because it IS a lot like SR4. It's essentially SR4 with the brokenest parts fixed, and a few miscellaneous improvements here and there. If what I'm describing sounds vastly better than SR5, that's because it is.

He is trying to patch up the Shadowrun.

[malak]

You should really make a repo on github or bitbucket or so with the text sources of your document, so people can just send pull request with typos fixed etc.

[Username17]

Right now you have a lot of spell checker errors. For example: the process that increases your magic cap should be called initiation, not initiative. It looks like you hit your work with an auto-correct and it turned a lot of things into word salad.

From a design standpoint, I think you have to justify the use of Build Points alongside Karma and I think you have to justify retaining the Body and Willpower stats. Those were bad design choices in the first place, and if you're doing a major overhaul like this, "tradition" isn't a good enough reason.

-Username17

[Ferret]

Frank, you're a proponent of collapsing Body and Strength and Willpower and...uh, something, IIRC? Brief run down of why?

[Username17]

Frank, you're a proponent of collapsing Body and Strength and Willpower and...uh, something, IIRC? Brief run down of why?

Body is a shitty stat. Strength is a shitty stat. They don't do things. Imagine for the moment that you had a single stat that did all of the following:

• Set your damage with inferior weapons (melee weapons), except not the best of those inferior weapons (monowhip, cattleprods).
• Set your range limit with inferior weapons (thrown weapons and explosives without a launcher).
• Set the limit on encumbrance (in a game that doesn't track weight)
• Added to your dicepool with the following actions:
  • Climbing
  • Running
  • Swimming
  • Diving (assuming you actually spent points on this fucking skill, because it's not included in swimming)
  • fucking Parachuting
• Physical Damage Resistance (but not Physical Damage Negation like Reaction does).

That's the whole damn list. Now imagine that someone had decided that despite the fact that Agility is used in 18 different skills (that is not an exaggeration), and Reaction is actually better at preventing physical damage and also makes you go first in combat and has just as many attached skills - that this extremely underwhelming attribute was scheduled to be cut in two and each piece would have the same points cost as the whole. What would you say? Would you laugh in their fucking face for being stupid? I sure would.

Now as to what to collapse Willpower into, for SR4 I would suggest collapsing it into Edge. Willpower is an even shittier stat than Body, because it mostly affects resistance to attack modes most enemies cannot use, and those enemies who can use those attack modes also have alternate attack modes that target different stats. So against most enemies it does nothing and against those enemies that it does anything it is their choice whether to use an attack that targets it or not.

-Username17

[Seerow]

That's being slightly unfair. Encumbrance limits in shadowrun actually do make a pretty decent effect on survivability. You don't track weight, but you do track armor. It makes Body 3x as effective as it would be otherwise. It may still be really inferior to Agility, but it isn't wholly useless.

[Blade]

@Heisenberg :
If you're looking on feedback on your changes rather than ideas of other changes people think would be useful, you'd better mention it. Otherwise, the thread risks turning into arguments about rule changes you don't care about.

[Heisenberg]

You going to fill it with artwork too?

No budget for that as of now. You know, conceivably I could actually budget this, but I'm not sure how practical or necessary this is. I'm also not sure how serious a question this was. If it's necessary to state the obvious: I can't compete with CGL on a production values level. I can make a way better game, but it won't be 1/1000th as pretty. Then again, it's free.

Sorry if I went and read too much into an innocent question.

You should really make a repo on github or bitbucket or so with the text sources of your document, so people can just send pull request with typos fixed etc.

At the risk of sounding like a dummy, can you explain this to me a bit slower and in more detail? I actually don't know anything about github or bitbucket, and I'm not sure what you mean by text sources either. Sorry!

Right now you have a lot of spell checker errors. For example: the process that increases your magic cap should be called initiation, not initiative. It looks like you hit your work with an auto-correct and it turned a lot of things into word salad.

Weird and unsettling. I never used a spellchecker/auto-correct at any point. Also I'm not seeing this error now, and I didn't see it before uploading. The words Initiation and Initiative both seem to be appearing where they should be. For instance...

INITIATION
Initiation allows a character to wield greater magical abilities known as metamagic, and raise his
Magic attribute beyond the natural maximum of 6. Only characters with the Magician, Adept, or
Aspected Mage qualities amy initiate. Initiating is kind of a big deal, a serious process requiring
a great deal of ritual, study, and both mental and spiritual preparation (in the case of an Adept, it
requires physical preparation as well). Initiation also takes a lot of time, at the GM's discretion.
Initiation is measured in grades, beginning with Grade 1 and increasing virtually
indefinitely (although Grades much higher than 5 are vanishingly rare, and Grades much higher
than 10 are virtually unheard of). At the end of a character's first initiation, she is a Grade 1
initiate. When she completes her second initiation, she is a Grade 2 initiate, and so on. Each
magical tradition uses its own terminology for different grades of initiation.
The cost to initiate is equal to 10 + (Grade x 2) in Karma points. Characters who wish to
initiate must pay that cost in order to achieve their new grade.
A character's initiate grade cannot exceed her Magic attribute. If a character's Magic is
reduced below her initiate grade, she loses that level of initiation and the metamagic she gained
with it.

Excusing horrible formatting from copypasta...the words Initiation/Initiate are displaying correctly. (Although I did spot a few typos that spellcheck would have caught, ironically.)

Er, anyway...page reference of specific error or errors? I'd find these super useful as I'm compiling a list.

From a design standpoint, I think you have to justify the use of Build Points alongside Karma

I agree.

and I think you have to justify retaining the Body and Willpower stats.

I don't agree.

...and if you're doing a major overhaul like this, "tradition" isn't a good enough reason.

Ok, so...re: Karma vs. Build Points. I am probably going to chuck Karma. It wasn't a terribly high priority, and I actually forgot it until just now...but Karma's gotta go. You will build your character on Build Points. You will then advance your character on Build Points.

That was always the intention but at some point in doing the magic chapter I fell into a fugue state and, eyes glazed over, stupidly left in references to Karma. In the final game, most likely, everything will USE Build Points which will probably be called Karma.

Re: Body and Willpower. I agree, generally speaking, that tradition is not, in-and-of-itself, a compelling reason to carry over game features/mechanics. However, this is a fan project, and the fact that Shadowrun has had Body and Willpower since First Edition does carry some weight with me, personally. More in a later post.

@Heisenberg :
If you're looking on feedback on your changes rather than ideas of other changes people think would be useful, you'd better mention it. Otherwise, the thread risks turning into arguments about rule changes you don't care about.

The bolded thing is what I want. The italic thing is what I don't want so much. I am mentioning it now. Good call.

[Seerow]

Re: Body and Willpower. I agree, generally speaking, that tradition is not, in-and-of-itself, a compelling reason to carry over game features/mechanics. However, this is a fan project, and the fact that Shadowrun has had Body and Willpower since First Edition does carry some weight with me, personally. More in a later post.

If you're set on maintaining Body/Willpower at least make them derived stats. Don't make people waste buildpoints on basic survivability.

[Heisenberg]

Frank, you're a proponent of collapsing Body and Strength and Willpower and...uh, something, IIRC? Brief run down of why?

Body is a shitty stat. Strength is a shitty stat. They don't do things. Imagine for the moment that you had a single stat that did all of the following:

• Set your damage with inferior weapons (melee weapons), except not the best of those inferior weapons (monowhip, cattleprods).
• Set your range limit with inferior weapons (thrown weapons and explosives without a launcher).
• Set the limit on encumbrance (in a game that doesn't track weight)
• Added to your dicepool with the following actions:
  • Climbing
  • Running
  • Swimming
  • Diving (assuming you actually spent points on this fucking skill, because it's not included in swimming)
  • fucking Parachuting
• Physical Damage Resistance (but not Physical Damage Negation like Reaction does).

That's the whole damn list. Now imagine that someone had decided that despite the fact that Agility is used in 18 different skills (that is not an exaggeration), and Reaction is actually better at preventing physical damage and also makes you go first in combat and has just as many attached skills - that this extremely underwhelming attribute was scheduled to be cut in two and each piece would have the same points cost as the whole. What would you say? Would you laugh in their fucking face for being stupid? I sure would.

Now as to what to collapse Willpower into, for SR4 I would suggest collapsing it into Edge. Willpower is an even shittier stat than Body, because it mostly affects resistance to attack modes most enemies cannot use, and those enemies who can use those attack modes also have alternate attack modes that target different stats. So against most enemies it does nothing and against those enemies that it does anything it is their choice whether to use an attack that targets it or not.

-Username17

This is a great post and contains some strong arguments. I could get behind collapsing Strength and Body into a single stat called Body, and collapsing Willpower and Edge into a single stat called...Willpower? Edge? Wedge? Edpower?

That said, I'm not interested in conflating those stats for SRPC.

I think there's some things your argument fails to take into account. Let's start with Body, because first off, resisting damage is really, really important in Shadowrun. It's something just about every character has to do, just about all the time. And there are types of damage that Body can resist but Reaction can't negate, for instance, area of effect attacks like grenades that you can't dodge, or physical spells like powerbolt, or falling damage, and so on. In these situations, high Body is tremendously useful for not getting turned into a red smear where a character once was. Furthermore, no matter how jacked your Reaction attribute, you won't dodge everything all the time. Automatic fire wide bursts, multiple attacks with cumulative iterative defense penalties, or just plain bad luck will get you eventually. And at that point, whether you've got a 3 in Reaction or a 9, you're going to be wanting a 4 or a 5 in Body, not a 2. And remember, Body also determines how quickly you heal and get back on your feet after combat.

Strength on the other hand...is a completely fucking horrible stat in SR4(A). Unless you're a physical adept or you plan on climbing a lot of stuff, there is NO reason to increase it above 2 in SR4. And it's not great in previous editions of Shadowrun, either, IIRC.

My edition, SRPC will attempt to fix this in a few ways to make Strength something worth investing points in.

* More skills will be Strength-linked. Not a lot, but more than basically zilch.
* Melee combat in general will be a more effective and viable option.
* Worn armor allotment will be based on Strength instead of Body. This will cause Body to take a hit, but as I went on about above, I think that Body is actually one of the more powerful attributes (certainly better than, say, Logic).

With that in mind, I plan on keeping Body and Strength around.

Now Willpower I think you're giving somewhat short shrift. The "rare" attack mode that Willpower defends against is the most devastatingly effective one in the game. (This may not be as true in SR4 as it was in SR3, but casting a manaball spell against goons with Willpower 2 is a completely different ballgame than casting a manaball spell against goons with Willpower 5.) Willpower also helps you not die to black IC, bio-feedback, and nasty shit in the Matrix, which is useful to some character types. Finally, in previous editions of the game, although not SR4, Willpower contributed to Combat Pool, which was very important. This isn't super relevant, granted, but it's worth typing as a footnote.

That's being slightly unfair. Encumbrance limits in shadowrun actually do make a pretty decent effect on survivability. You don't track weight, but you do track armor. It makes Body 3x as effective as it would be otherwise. It may still be really inferior to Agility, but it isn't wholly useless.

For what it's worth, in SRPC, Armor Encumbrance will be based on Strength, not Body, as mentioned above. (No matter how you feel about Body being a shit stat or not, I think we can all agree in SR4, Strength is much worse, and governing worn armor is one of the things it always should have done.)

[Heisenberg]

If you're set on maintaining Body/Willpower at least make them derived stats. Don't make people waste buildpoints on basic survivability.

I'm ok with entertaining this idea at least hypothetically, because I get where you're coming from. Hypothetically, what would you have "defense/resistance" stats like Body and Willpower be derived from?

[Echoes]

If you're set on maintaining Body/Willpower at least make them derived stats. Don't make people waste buildpoints on basic survivability.

I'm ok with entertaining this idea at least hypothetically, because I get where you're coming from. Hypothetically, what would you have "defense/resistance" stats like Body and Willpower be derived from?

How about Body equals (Strength + Agility) / 2, and Willpower equals (Intuition + Charisma) / 2? Alternatively, you could have them be (Attribute + Edge), in which case Body could be (Strength + Edge) and Willpower could be (Charisma + Edge), or whatever.

[fectin]

So, once you're rearranging skills to make stats more useful, I think you're past the point of "just patch it". Hence my question on design goals.

Even if you were completely and only doing mechanical tweaks to balance, you'd want to briefly define what balance meant (equal effect in combat/everyone contributes in/out of combat/Rewickered costs/whatever) and a baseline.

Up to you, but the lack of focus here is probably because you haven't provided a lens. (note that I barely know how to spell "shadowrun", my advice is strictly procedural)

[Korwin]

I think Frank uses 2BP for Skills and 5 PB for Skill Groups in his other HR.
Why did you use 3BP and 8BP?

Btw. I hate the exotic weapon skill. Please find another solution.
(You allready created the Whip skill and placed it under the Meele Group.)


Will read more later.

[Seerow]

* Worn armor allotment will be based on Strength instead of Body. This will cause Body to take a hit, but as I went on about above, I think that Body is actually one of the more powerful attributes (certainly better than, say, Logic).

1) You're insane. Logic is already one of the best stats, with a huge list of linked skills and being a major thing for Deckers and Mages (you know, 2/3 of the major archtypes).

2) If you go through with your plan of making Encumbrance based on strength, while keeping them separate, all you've done is make Body even more worthless. Seriously, 1 die of soak is not worth 10 build points. Ever. Hell even giving out Body for free it's barely worth noticing.

[Username17]

Now Willpower I think you're giving somewhat short shrift. The "rare" attack mode that Willpower defends against is the most devastatingly effective one in the game. (This may not be as true in SR4 as it was in SR3, but casting a manaball spell against goons with Willpower 2 is a completely different ballgame than casting a manaball spell against goons with Willpower 5.)

You're stuck in variable target number thinking. In SR1-3, changing your willpower changed the target number of special willpower attacks, because it was not only your resistance pool, it was also the caster's difficulty. In SR4, the difference between Willpower 2 and Willpower 5 is three dice. That's one hit, on average, and you still basically get the full brunt of the spell. Control Actions won't last as long, but it'll last long enough to have you put your gun in your mouth if that's what they want to do to you.

Further, you're still using SR4's one-box-per-hit damage codes rather than SR 1-3's LMSD damage levels. That means that an extra three dice of damage resistance is still just 1 damage box. In a world where shooting someone is a Simple Action, filling in one less box or even three less boxes isn't going to keep you standing when (not if) they shoot you a second time. The two-shot problem that SR4 labored under is alive and well in your system. Indeed, all you've done is remove Body and Willpower's increase of the number of boxes you have, making it even less likely that more Body or Willpower will cause you to drop in 3 shots instead of 2.

Structurally, damage resistance doesn't do dick in this system. Your only real defenses are not getting hit in the first place and going first - and both of those are handled by Reaction.

Strength and Body were in 1st edition because the original stats were just renamed versions of the D&D stats. D&D had Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, so Shadowrun had Strength, Quickness, and Body. But it was a game about detective work and gun fights, so Intelligence and Quickness were obviously way better than the other stats. Shadowrun 4 split Quickness and Intelligence into two stats each. But the thing is: each half of those stats is still better than Strength or Body by itself. By a lot. Having 6 stats wasn't a bad idea, but the six stats should have been: Strength, Agility, Reaction, Logic, Intuition, Charisma.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

There's a 38 page thread of Cyberpunk Fantasy Heartbreaker discussion on the Den:
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=52792

Did it ever cover what attributes would be used for its core mechanics?

[OgreBattle]

*double

[Nath]

Having 6 stats wasn't a bad idea, but the six stats should have been: Strength, Agility, Reaction, Logic, Intuition, Charisma

Though I came to the same conclusion regarding Constitution and Strength, I also can't help but think the divide between Logic and Intuition is ill-defined. I mean, Shadowrun 4th and 5th editions have knowledge skills based on the Intuition attribute. Etymologically, there's something wrong here.

[Username17]

Having 6 stats wasn't a bad idea, but the six stats should have been: Strength, Agility, Reaction, Logic, Intuition, Charisma

Though I came to the same conclusion regarding Constitution and Strength, I also can't help but think the divide between Logic and Intuition is ill-defined. I mean, Shadowrun 4th and 5th editions have knowledge skills based on the Intuition attribute. Etymologically, there's something wrong here.

That is a fair point. Probably it would be better for the stat that affects your perception tests to be called "Perception" and the stat that affects your computer hacking to be called "Intelligence." Then the skill that adds to your die roll to find clues or spot ambushes could be called "Intuition."

The bottom line is still that in a game about solving mysteries, performing espionage, and having gun fights in the near future, SR1's Intelligence stat was way too fucking broad. What you actually name the daughter stats is a separate issue. I admit that I've never been super happy with "Logic" or "Intuition." The words don't actually relate terribly well to the kinds of intelligence that they cover game mechanically.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

How about this?
Strength
Perception
Endurance
Charisma
Intelligence
Agility
Luck

and the derived stats like initiative.

[Smirnoffico]

Having 6 stats wasn't a bad idea, but the six stats should have been: Strength, Agility, Reaction, Logic, Intuition, Charisma.

What would be drain-resisting trait be then? Magic+Tradition Stat?