SR 6e Announcement

[Ignimortis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtcHfpf5SQU

Well, it's here. Here's the short list of what's listed here:

• No limits
  No Force - you just decide on parameters (damage, radius, etc.) of your spell before casting it
  Edge is reset each scene, has new effects, gained by assuming a superior position over opponents
  Situational modifiers are gone - I have a feeling that CGL tied that into edge and almost everything that used to give clear-cut advantages in various situations will now award edge
  Matrix is different again, no marks - you just see the device and hack it
  Recoil is basically integrated now, bursts deal more damage but are harder to hit
  No Drain Resist - you take the difference between Drain Value, modified by whatever you decided to do to your spell, and subtract your Spellcasting hits from that. Take what remains (if anything) as drain. Depending on drain codes, this will either be a full Magicrun edition or a game where a mage can't really cast more than 5-6 spells per run
  Counterspelling is passive and is based off Spellcasting with no special skill
  Healing is limited to 3 per day per category: Magical, First Aid, Medkit. Can be applied in any order, too
  Vehicle rules changed again - since there are no limits, there's no need for dumb 5e vehicle stats

Basically...4e still looks better with a few houserules.

[Username17]

Many of those changes are just rolling back some dumb ideas from 5th edition that we all told them were dumb ideas.

But getting rid of Force is also a dumb idea. Force is a really elegant system for setting spell power, and in the days of 4th edition worked really well. I of course remember the old "force dependent and force independent" spells of 1st through 3rd edition, but that was gone in 4th edition. We have a totally workable system for spell power and a fully functional reason why we might want to cast spells with higher or lower drain codes.

This seems like an extension of the same ham handed flailing approach to game design that made 5th edition unplayable garbage. Having attempted and failed to port the rules for casting spells into the rules for buying optional extras on your firearms, they are now trying to use the rules for buying optional extras on your firearms for casting spells.

The methodology here is so stupid that I assume they get assistance with dressing in the morning.

-Username17

[Dogbert]

Is it still class-based?

[Ignimortis]

Is it still class-based?

Not sure what you're talking about, but no mentions of anything class-based so far. Still, I'm pretty sure they won't drop the divide between "you either have magic from the start or you don't get it ever".

[Stahlseele]

Shadowrun has never been class-based o.O

[Lago PARANOIA]

If SR6's setting doesn't have the resurgence of Blood-and-Soil fascism (as opposed to Singaporean-style fascism) rocking the foundations of the corporatist status quo then I don't even think it's worth discussing.

[Username17]

If SR6's setting doesn't have the resurgence of Blood-and-Soil fascism (as opposed to Singaporean-style fascism) rocking the foundations of the corporatist status quo then I don't even think it's worth discussing.

You know the answer to that just because of who is writing it.

In a broader sense, Shadowrun's political awareness has always been at about the level of a college liberal or left-wing street punk from the 80s. Racism is bad, pollution is bad, big corporations leverage power and money to get additional power over our lives and that's bad. And that is honestly about as far as it goes.

Shadowrun never really came to grips with new bad stuff that happened in the nineties, let alone updated its list of badstuff for the 21st century. One of the core reasons that books like Neo-Anarchist Guides and Shadowbeat were ultimately disappointing is that Shadowrun didn't come to grips with a theory of what players could actually do to make the world less shitty - or even come up with a working diagnosis as to what was making the world shitty in the first place.

Next leveling the cyberpunk dystopia and asking "What do we do about it?" is basically what Shadowrun needed to do at some point if it were to ever "grow up." And well, it did not do that. It's all early Deus Ex levels forever. And anyone who might have ever allowed Shadowrun to grow up on any axis left the company, and there's no reason to care about the property anymore.

-Username17

[Longes]

If SR6's setting doesn't have the resurgence of Blood-and-Soil fascism (as opposed to Singaporean-style fascism) rocking the foundations of the corporatist status quo then I don't even think it's worth discussing.

I don't think this narrative would make much sense without rewriting large chunks of the setting. Shadowrun's megacorporations are old and big. They aren't workplaces - they are ethnicities. You have fourth-generation Ares and Saedder-Krupp and Aztechnology people - people who were born and raised and identify not as Americans or Germans, but as Aresians and Saedder-Kruppians. I'd find it pretty weird for a resurgence of racism to affect megacorporations because the megacorporations are old enough and big enough to have their own racists push back.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't think this narrative would make much sense without rewriting large chunks of the setting.

I don't give a shit if it requires a lot of work. I give a shit if the thematic elements are relevant. Shadowrun is stuck in the 80s. Even if the mechanics were great, it'd still just be a hopeless grognard-fellating nostalgia trip.

If Shadowrun wants to interest me, it has to present a vision of cyperpunk dystopia that meaningfully stems from current trends. At a minimum, this means the resurgence of blood-and-soil fascism. Some stuff about strong AI and the slow breakdown of corporatism from climate change would be nice, too.

EDIT: Cthulhutech is a more relevant vision of cyberpunk dystopia than fucking Shadowrun, despite being stuck in the nineties and not even really being cyberpunk. How sad is that shit?

[Username17]

Blood and Soil Fascism as performed today is extremely corporatist. Like, Brexit doesn't happen because angry white people are angry at slightly different white people - it happened because of a powergrab by corporations who thought that the European Union was too big to control. Donald Trump made some weird populist ramblings during the election, but all of that was lies. His only real "accomplishments" during his tenure as whitehouse occupier have been to roll back regulations on big companies and lower taxes on huge corporations.

It's an interesting social trend, and it's probably going to kill hundreds of thousands of people over the next few years - but it's not a refutation of corporatism. The corporations are stronger and richer than ever before under these new fascist governments. Trump and May literally get told what to do on a daily basis by turning on the television and finding out what NewsCorp wants.

-Username17

[Nath]

Shadowrun had a state where your social status is based on a nation-wide academic and athletic test and whether you're a Tolkienesque ubermensch or not. It had the southern states seceding from Washington bureaucracy and corporate lobbies and preparing for war against latinos for the control of Texas. It had the Russian Orthodox church backing troops in a decades-long war against spirits and shamans to regain access to Siberian gas reserves.

Shadowrun certainly has more than its share of shitty and lazy writing. But I won't let you say you cannot make it resonate with our time.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I see the resurgence of Blood and Soil fascism causing a cycle of instability as governments are forced to take actions to reinforce their short-term political legitimacy that undermines their medium-term legitimacy. Think a hundred Brexits across the planet. Aztechnology is forced to do trade sanctions by its confused and angry Outer Party. When they get downgraded to a AA corporation, the pigs demand a new round of sanctions and border disputes to Make Mexico Great Again.

Corporatism as a force thus becomes a stronger and more pervasive force in peoples' lives, but A) individual corporations become weaker and more fragmented and B) it's expressed differently. You trade in your yuppie, infantalizing, control-freak dad for an alcoholic hillbilly dad.

[Longes]

If we want to nitpick, then blood and soil has already happened in Shadowrun and won. It was called NAN and it was called Tir nA nOg.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If we want to nitpick, then blood and soil has already happened in Shadowrun and won. It was called NAN and it was called Tir nA nOg.

The point is that THIS instance of blood and soil fascism is internally and cyclically destabilizing. Think Third Reich instead of Thailand.

[Dogbert]

Shadowrun has never been class-based o.O

Never? Ok I was probably misinformed then, because I remember having heard it was gonna be class-based and that was the deal-breaker for me.

[Dogbert]

Next leveling the cyberpunk dystopia and asking "What do we do about it?" is basically what Shadowrun needed to do at some point if it were to ever "grow up."

Except the game is supposed to be Cyberpunk, not Romantic Fantasy. Even in "Post-Cyberpunk" the best you can do is pushing The Man back and looking cool doing it, but you're not supposed to topple him, ever. Furthermore, Cyberpunk's genre conventions dictate that being a do-gooder only gets you betrayed then evicted then killed, and players don't want to take the Idiot Ball of their own volition as a general thing.

[Ignimortis]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZPN ... e0l2wp9e2m

Mechanics that are known so far. Suffice to say, all of this looks like typical CGL, because having to shoot an unarmored civvie with a Heavy Pistol three times or more to kill him is ridiculous.

[Korwin]

Fuck Cyberpunk's conventions.
I dont care about those.

Make an mix of SciFi and Magic in the near future and I am happy.

[Dogbert]

Fuck Cyberpunk's conventions.
I dont care about those.
Make an mix of SciFi and Magic in the near future and I am happy.

Sooo you're basically not even Shadowrun's target demo. Got it.

[Korwin]

Fuck Cyberpunk's conventions.
I dont care about those.
Make an mix of SciFi and Magic in the near future and I am happy.

Sooo you're basically not even Shadowrun's target demo. Got it.

I think I am not only SR Player who likes the mix of SciFi and Magic and doesnt care about the "You are not able to do anything because the "Man/Corp" allways win".

I would say, I am not in the same SR target demo group than you.
Not shure about what group is the bigger one.
(Pretty shure your group is the more vocal/louder one)

[Stahlseele]

@Dogbert
There are ARCHETYPES like the Decker, the Street Samurai, the Rigger, the Mage . .
But those are not classes.
You get a priority or point based character generation system with some limitations as to what you are allowed to get with the ressource budget allocated to you and from then on it is free form building that can and will take hours to fine tune . .

[Dogbert]

@Dogbert
There are ARCHETYPES like the Decker, the Street Samurai, the Rigger, the Mage . .
But those are not classes.

Thanks.

[Stahlseele]

There are not many restricted skills, aside from some, not even all, of the magic stuff, everybody can have every skill basically.
And aside from some magical exceptions, everybody can have every weapon and armor as well.

The Street Samurai is basically a mundane (no magic/resonance) with high priority in money that then went into putting machines and tailor made organs into his body to improve himself in some way.
Some go for full combat monkey, some go for versatility and becoming a swiss army knife of tools, others go for athletics and stealth for becoming a nth level cat burglar . .

The Decker is basically a mundane with high priority money that puts it into becoming johnny mnemonic/neo.
The Rigger is basically a mundane with high priority money that puts it into either vehicles or drones that he then controls with his mind.
These two can and sometimes do overlap quite a bit as of SR4.

Mages come in different forms as well.
Full Mages that can summon spirits and cast spells.
Aspected ones that can not do all of that but are slightly better than the normal ones in their chosen niche.
Physical Mages, called Adepts, basically WarriorMonks that use their magical powers to enhance their bodies in ways that suit them to become something like a magical version of the street samurai . .

[Username17]

I see the resurgence of Blood and Soil fascism causing a cycle of instability as governments are forced to take actions to reinforce their short-term political legitimacy that undermines their medium-term legitimacy.

Shadowrun posits that the major countries of the world have broken up into squabbling successor states that get pushed around by corporations because they are too weak to provide water and police protection for their people and have to contract that shit out to multinational corporations.

Shadowrun China is split up into 18 pieces, some of which control no territory at all outside a single city. Shadowrun America is split up into 16 pieces, many of which include portions of what are now other countries that aren't the United States, and some of which are again just cities with weird self-rule treaties.

Shadowrun's future posits that the "nation state" is so discredited that people don't think it's weird that people are paid in corporate scrip instead of nationally issued currencies. Regionalism and isolationism "won" so hard that national governments are so weak that they aren't expected to even attempt to maintain a monopoly of force inside their own declared borders.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Which made the attempted MURICA resurrection conspiracy so weird . .