Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[Pendulous Dong]

I can do a write up if people are interested (and if I go buy some scotch before I start because I'd fucking need it).

Please do. I've always maintained that the mechanics of Shadowrun are the weakest part of the game, but the more I look at the actual lore the less I like it.

 

[AnOminous]

One of my favorite exploitable characters was the gnome illusionist/thief combo. To the point I limited it to NPCs.

I once played this as a PC and when the GM figured out what I'd done he was like you are not under any circumstances allowed to play this fucking thing again.

 

[Snekposter]

It's also not gotten any better over the years. I just got the newest book on Augmentations (which I missed the launch of because Catalyst absolutely refuse to actually market shit), and holy fuck is it bad. It has tranny shit that breaks decades of lore, which accidentally veers into tranny mocking territory without even realizing it, and it somehow still isn't the dumbest part of the book. I can do a write up if people are interested (and if I go buy some scotch before I start because I'd fucking need it).

Do it. I want to see how badly they screwed the pooch on axe wounds.

 

[The Ugly One]

This was another point in our discussion, where I argued that "you really don't want to fight us and die, get out of here" was a reasonable suggestion that appeals to one's self-preservation instincts, but he replied that by my interpretation, it wasn't reasonable at all to abandon a fight you're in the middle of.

Morale checks to see if monsters would flee a fight were in D&D from the beginning. Also something for DMs to keep in mind, Mass Suggestion is a 6th level spell, same level as Globe of Invulnerability, Planar Ally, and Create Undead. It's not some chickenshit spell that can't scare off a bunch of mooks, which something Fear, a 3rd-level spell, is entirely capable of.

 

[Overly Serious]

Please do. I've always maintained that the mechanics of Shadowrun are the weakest part of the game, but the more I look at the actual lore the less I like it.

The Mechanics in 4th were exemplary. If @East_Clintwood is willing to write up how bad the lore and rules are in 5th +, I can probably find time to write up something about what a work of love 4th was.

I also would like to see East's write-up. My hate for CGL and what they did is bottomless. Leastways I'm five miles down and the hate is still vanishing into the darkness below me. It's like Milton wrote: "And in the deeps, a lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide".

 

[Pendulous Dong]

I can probably find time to write up something about what a work of love 4th was.

That would be great too, I've only read 3rd, 5th, and 6th editions and I find very little about them interesting or playable. Would be good to learn if I accidentally skipped over the One Good Edition™.

 

[Overly Serious]

That would be great too, I've only read 3rd, 5th, and 6th editions and I find very little about them interesting or playable. Would be good to learn if I accidentally skipped over the One Good Edition™.

If your criteria is solid balance and play-testing, then yes, you kind of did. But if your criteria is "fun" then no, 1st and 2nd edition were an absolute blast. 3rd is for me where both tone and rules started going downhill.

It helps that from the start Shadowrun had a really solid underpinning. Whilst there were flaws in 1st and 2nd, the rules concepts were solid. 4th had some things that some thought were flaws but generally that was from either armchair analysis missing something or just flat out not enforcing the actual rules. Possession Spirits I remember some people really arguing about. Which always turned out to be them not enforcing drain rules properly or treating spirits just flat out wrong.

One of the nice things about Shadowrun 4th was that by design nearly everybody could hit harder than they could take. Which is part of what led to the sneaky-ambush-betrayal-jank-them-before-they-jank-you tone of the game. Also, magic and technology had a consistent tone running through them which was that magic was powerful but technology was consistent. Returning to how some people routinely thought magic was overpowered they'd always turn out to be running some isolated comparison ignoring that to achieve their "unabalanced" take on magic they'd be letting the mage run around with tonnes of foci on them (these things are a bitch on stealth missions, setting off wards and lighting you up like a Christmas tree) or - great example - a GM who said that magic was overpowered and on examination turned out that the whole party was paying for the mage to summon and bind high force spirits (binding costs extra magic components and drain). So the Samurai would be just buying bullets for a mission and maybe spending 200 nuyen in total. And the mage would be spending upwards of 12,000 nuyen each mission. For which, as I said, everybody including the samurai would chip in. The GM would also allow the mage recovery time to get over the binding if it went badly. So if the mage hospitalises himself summoning a too-powerful spirit the GM was just "well, the mission will start when he's healed". No shit magic seems "too powerful" when you have a player spending literal 60x as much in expenses than the technology based PC and the mage is allowed infinite recovery time. Never seen a samurai hurt himself putting in a new clip.

A lot of stuff like that from clueless people and angry grognards who didn't actually play 4th but wanted to bitch about how broken it was endlessly.

 

[Ghostse]

Never seen a samurai hurt himself putting in a new clip.

Spend more time at the range, you will. /sneed

 

[ZMOT]

man, completely forgot about that shadowrun posts (side effect of touching too much grass)

Then frankly you were playing it wrong. The game effect of the changes in 4th, as I said, moved you away from the Cyberspace "dungeon" model of earlier editions. The Matrix was now closely integrated into the physical world with drones, access points, enemies all being effectively mobile mini-Matrices and entry points in their own right. In doing so, the hacker was (a) running across numerous opportunities in the physical space to use their skills and (b) not some comatose dead weight working their way through some series of virtual nodes to get to the useful thing whilst physically wired into a wall. They were mobile and with lots of active overlap.

As to "surface level normiefags", my opinion as someone who has worked in IT and infrastructure for 20 years and argued with these critics at the time, is that 4th was FAR closer to how technology has actually turned out than 3rd and earlier was. The number of arguments I had with people who were what you actually accuse the writers of being - people who had a superficial understanding and fan approach to technology I have lost count of. People weren't upset because it wasn't accurate. In fact 4th was extremely well received and played superbly well in practice. The critics were a bunch of terminally online minority grognards who hated that "deckers" no longer had to walk around with a giant deck and no longer looked like this:

the problem was less playing but the "logic" behind it. if you worked in IT you should know better than anyone vast interconnected systems with access anywhere (especially fucking physical) is fucking retarded from a security standpoint. oh hey there's an open USB port connecting to the mainframe right there in the receptionists deck, how convenient...
deckers being "mobile and active" also reeks of hollywood shit because hackerman antics are hard to convey (unless you go full NCIS with double-keyboard counterhacking) - there's a reason most nerds aren't swole, that's not where their talent lies. I get getting them more involved for the sake of the game makes sense, especially how it was implemented before, but again for me that goes against the logic behind it.

or look at it this way: in a world where flying is common, it's only natural most mooks run around with a fucking crossbow. your mage might whine the DM is picking on him, but you either have a powerfantasy or common sense logic, not both. same for shadowrun.

 

[Overly Serious]

Spend more time at the range, you will. /sneed

Maybe. But I've yet to see a demon burst out of his skull.

deckers being "mobile and active" also reeks of hollywood shit because hackerman antics are hard to convey (unless you go full NCIS with double-keyboard counterhacking) - there's a reason most nerds aren't swole, that's not where their talent lies.

So lets address the above before I get into the Matrix stuff specifically.

First off, I hate the American cultural export of highschool clichés, especially when carried into adulthood. As if Jocks and Nerds were some real life character class that you pick have to pick. Successful and intelligent people generally have better health and maintain better fitness than those less successful. We're not putting points in Physical or Mental. Generally some people just really are genetically better. Whether you're an electrician or a programmer or a doctor - intelligence and ambition and good health correlate. Go for a walk around Walmart and look at some less successful examples of humanity who didn't have the drive to succeed at school, and live a life of unskilled labour. You'll see worse cardiovascular fitness than an office of tech workers on average. You get some amorphous blobs in IT sure - because the career doesn't require physical fitness, that's all. Poor education and low intelligence correlate with poor health, I find.

Beside anyone whose job is infiltrating corporate installations is going to pay attention to fitness regardless. It's not remotely "hollywood shit" for a hacker member of the team to be fit. And if none of that convinces you for some reason, I'll just remind you that in 2043 they literaly have a cosmetic surgery chain called Whole New You where you can do walk-in appointments and have your body resculpted, your bones augmented and new eyes put in. Give them a weeks notice and they can fit you a new heart and lungs. In Shadowrun money is everything - you can buy fitness.

I get getting them more involved for the sake of the game makes sense, especially how it was implemented before, but again for me that goes against the logic behind it.

Okay, lets get into Shadowrun. Here's a 1st / 2nd edition Matrix map for some installation. I just searched online for one and up it came - frankly this is one of the *better* ones I have seen.



It's basically a whole dungeon exploration for the Decker (as was). I don't need to belabour the point about what a chore it is for everybody who isn't the Decker when this is put on the table. Everybody can see it just doesn't work well. It's a colossal split the party concept that relegates everybody else to go and watch a movie while the Decker does his thing. 4th edition played massively better and someone would have to be willfully stupid to try and argue otherwise.

Lets compare with something I just drew. It's a medium sized corporate site. I could throw in the clichéd research lab or anything on here if I chose.



I'll explain details in a bit but I'm choosing to put this up first because you can see how slick and easy it is for a GM to put this stuff together and if you're smart you'll already be seeing how it can more naturally integrate into a game. So lets talk about plausibility - that's where you were getting hung up.

You have a phone in your pocket right now. It probably has access to various of your accounts - email, banking app, whatever. When 4th came out this sort of stuff was still in its infancy and I had endless grognards whining about how unrealistic it was that someone would have "money" or financial records on their commlink. But I can swipe my phone to pay for things and look up my payments on it. You probably have a laptop, and a maybe a desktop in your home. At least the laptop will be wirelessly communicating with your router, with your headphones, printer, whatever; 50/50 the desktop is as well (and that's only becoming more common). In 1st/2nd, that just wasn't a thing - decks were plugged into Matrix outlets in the wall, so were terminals. To hack you move from node to node in the Matrix dungeon. Now which is most realistic? 4th with its concept of wirless nodes or the 1st/2nd/3rd dungeon crawl? And to be clear, 4th edition didn't *remove* going through various routes, it added to it.

Lets talk about accounts. Your phone, your laptop, they both have credentials for your accounts - same credentials. And if you're some special snowflake who doesn't good for you but the masses of humanity don't live like you. 1st/2nd/3rd didn't really have this concept of accounts and subscriptions. It was all about physical location and infrastructure. If you wanted to turn the lights off in your home, you went through the literal telecom system finding the local "SAN" where your physical house was and hacked through the house node to turn off the lights. But you and I both know that today we open up an app on our phone and turn on or off our lights, our heating, Hell even start the meal in the oven warming up. Because there's, in 4th terms, your house nodes are subscribed to your phone (commlink in 4th). So if a hacker can get User level access to your commlink, they can issue commands as you. This all sounds blindingly obvious doesn't it? Well that's because it's how things work in the modern world. It's less about physical location and more about authenatication and authorisation. Hell if it's IPv6 we don't even need to deal with NAT. But in pre-4th it's about physical location. Shadowrun came out over three decades ago when a mobile phone was literally the size of a brick and you only saw them in movies. 4th doesn't remove physical location but it brings us to a much more modern conceptual model. Lets look at that diagram I just made. The office has a "Matrix Lobby" node. And it runs an agent. That's what greets people when they connect from the Matrix and says "Hi, do you have an appointment?" and "Welcome back Mr Yamoto here is an updated list of items you may wish to purchase". The lobby node is also wireless because if you walk into the physical lobby you should be able to connect to it and it should be able to scan your commlink to see who has just come in. If you look further down on the diagram you can see there are three Ares drones on site. Each of these is functionally a node in the Matrix. They are wireless too - because they roam around the complex checking for intruders so they have to be. How would that work pre-4th? Well it couldn't. The Matrix and hacking required you to be jacked in and physical connections so they'd just be these... things that couldn't really be interacted with by the Decker. On this diagram you can see like most nodes they have three levels of access. User, Security and Administrator. For those unfamiliar with 4th, when you hack something the higher the level the harder it is to succeed. A hacker can be useful just by getting User level access (if they can). Lets them see where the drones are, what their condition is, etc. Invaluable as the team moves through the complex. If the hacker gets Security level access he can actually issue commands (though the drone management system they're all subscribed to will notice and countermand probably. Still, useful in combat). If the hacker manages Admin access he can actually shut them down, or drop their subscription to the drone management system. This is far more interesting game wise for all concerned and, within the conceits of the setting that hacking is a thing at all, no issue with plausibility.

Lets look at the hacker getting some information out. They could come in via the Matrix and attempt to get through a whole sequence of nodes to get to, lets say the CEO's files in the Upper Management node. But if they come on site maybe they could find a route in through one of the terminals in the financial office. Honestly there's a tonne of interesting stuff going on here. Look at Department A. I have two IC programs on that node but the combat oriented one is actually inactive (which makes sense as you don't have everything running all the time). There's a second IC program with Stealth. If a hacker enters that node there's a good chance they wont spot it and whilst it might activate the combat IC if it feels necessary to it, it will otherwise just start silently tracing the hacker. Fun ensues.

There were a tonne of changes with 4th but frankly it has turned out to be a lot closer to real world technology concepts than 1st/2nd/3rd were. As well as a lot more fun to play.

So it couldn't represent how in the real world things just as much about authentication as physical location. Security vs. Convenience is the eternal tension in technology today. The same applies just as much in Shadowrun. Here's a quick example Matrix for a site I've come up with.

or look at it this way: in a world where flying is common, it's only natural most mooks run around with a fucking crossbow.

This makes no sense to me. What?

 

[Ghostse]

This makes no sense to me. What?

In that specific example, he's saying if Fly is a commonly accessible spell, it'd only make sense every single mook is going to have a crossbow to deal with flying magical fuckers.

in general, what he's saying is that in a world where deckers are constantly breaking into computer systems...
either you have a power trip fanasty where you can wirelessly hack the complex's mainframe in realtime to track the IP with a GUI you coded in VB, or you are in a logical world where you're going to have rigorously firewalled and microsegmented networks where secure terminal access will require a strip search and prostate exam.

 

[East_Clintwood]

If @East_Clintwood is willing to write up how bad the lore and rules are in 5th +

I'm definitely willing, just not sure the best way to go about it. Partly because I could legit find something to criticize in basically every aspect but mostly because my group primarily plays such a heavily house-ruled version it probably qualifies as it's own version at this point, so I'd probably have to deep dive back into the books to figure out exactly why we changed stuff. I think the best way would probably be to just sort of break it down into various smaller posts about individual issues rather than writing an entire thesis in one sitting.

Lore is much easier, and one of my favorite topics because the overall metaplot for 5e was CFD, which was so fucking badly received by the entire community they basically rushed out an ending just to get rid of it, and even though it introduced other fundamentally setting breaking instances of retardation people were still happy just because it was gone. There were other smaller plots that had potential that just kinda died off. Then 6E lore goes fucking wild in some places, some of which are shit, but some which were kinda unexpected and could be interesting, assuming they can rein in their instinct to fuck it up.

I'd also like to do some posts about the stuff I do like, because despite the fact it might seem I'm shitting on Shadowrun harder than a Saudi Arabian prince on an instagram model there is stuff I do like. There's a reason I've been playing Shadowrun for almost 2/3 of my life. I played it to keep in contact with my mates after my dad's job moved us across the pond, I played it on MSN messenger from my shitty barracks in Afghanistan, I played it over Skype from the hospital I spent months in when I nearly died, I played it at my friends wake, hell I even snuck in a mini session on my honeymoon while my missus was doing the whole spa rigmarole.

Now by popular request the 6E Body Shop breakdown. Before I get into the details I need to cover some basic Shadowrun stuff for those who aren't as familiar with the setting, so some stuff makes more sense.
Most important will be the concept of Essence. Fluffwise it's to do with your spirit/soul and it's connection to your body. Mechanically it's the limit on how many augmentations you can have (it does other shit to do with magic but that's not relevant here). The default is 6 and traditionally changing your body in any meaningful (and occasionally not so meaningful) way usually lowers it. Usually the more invasive the change the bigger the cost, for instance in 6e a basic cyber hand is 0.25 essence whereas a full cyber arm costs 1.

Now we get to the weird tranny shit that fucks the lore. Technically some of this existed in previous editions, but because trannies and "muh body positivity" faggots are incapable of not continually pushing things too far it gets outright retarded in 6E.

Back in 4E a sexchange cost you 20k and 0.3 essence (so 5% of your total). Seems fairly reasonable compared to other comparable changes. However that's not hecking body positive because it costing essence implies it's not natural. That brings us to 5E version. Now not only is it only $10k, it doesn't cost essence

A revolution from Universal Omnitech brought us the Zimmerman Method of Biosculpting, a huge advance in the field. While previous approaches in this particular field were based on speedy rebuilds, adding bio-material while stripping away the unnecessary, the Zimmerman Method is a slower, more holistic method that’s garnered rave reviews. The older method’s worst feature
was that the patient felt “different” in a way that continued to bother them after the changes. This was due to the insertion of foreign material into the body, eroding the patient’s sense of self. The Zimmerman Method instead uses the subject’s biomatter, and only their biomatter, like clay, molding and reshaping them into the desired appearance. This results in a more satisfying
experience fully without the “alien” feeling that haunted so many who came before. Finally, a patient can simply undo a mistake made by nature and be who they were always meant to be while feeling whole and pure.

The problem here is what they're describing in using the subjects biomatter to grow the new sex organs isn't new and revolutionary, it's basically a concept that already exists in Shadowrun called "Cultured Bioware", and cultured bioware still usually costs essence if it alters the body in some major way (as opposed to say getting a cultured limb replacement for a lost original which is essence free because it's not so much a "change" since you're replacing your original limb with an identical replacement. Where it gets doubly retarded is one of the examples of cultured bioware is reproductive replacement, which is basically what it sounds like:

While exo-wombs have been the primary form of clone production for decades now, they were predated by primitive endo-womb tech by half a century. Development along those lines stopped around 2050 as the process was effectively perfected, and it continues to be offered today. While it remains an option for males, the longer life of the male reproductive system means that most men who undertake the procedure are simply replacing parts damaged in accidents. The far more invasive female reproduction replacement is used more often for those suffering disease or for those who wish to have the childbearing options. Culturing the replacements from the donor’s DNA is vital to ensure that progeny carries the genetic structure of the parent.

This costs 20k and 0.3 essence for an actual woman, yet somehow that is more invasive/more of a change than some sex pest giving himself an actual cunt, dafuq?

In addition to legit sex changes there are also race changes (that's right chummer you can now live out your trans racial fantasies and be the nigger you know you are deep down), and metatype changes (although only really between elf, ork and human, dwarf to human, or human to troll is just too big of a leap). Again this is something that has existed in older books, but was generally looked down on with people doing it derogatorily referred to as posers, and should the group you were larping as find out you were liable to get your shit kicked in at best.
Minor sidebar I love the idea that they've basically normalized what is functionally blackface (or more likely redface giving Amerindian larping is almost certainly more popular in the Sixth World), even as people lose their shit over it IRL like the Rachel Dolezal case.

Now we get to 6E where allowing you to change your gender/race/meta at the drop of a hat is no longer progressive enough. Instead they introduce the absolutely dogshit idea that there are all sorts of other ways in which your body might not match your aura, and as such doing all sorts of weird fucking shit is actually a good thing

Anyway, it turns out that Essence is more complicated than we once thought. Our old understanding is like Newtonian physics—pretty good most of the time, but it breaks on certain edges. One odd thing we found is this: Some people who have had augmentations have not lost Essence because of them. Not many, but some. Once researchers found this, we realized that something was excitingly wrong about what we thought Essence was. Digging deeper, we found that those people who had augmentations but who still seemed to have an intact aura were people who had surgery that affirmed something about themselves. The most obvious example is people who have altered their bodies to better fit their gender identity. Those alterations usually don’t alter the Essence of the person undergoing the procedure, at least not as much as they would otherwise. When you realize that nature can screw up and make a body that doesn’t fit with an aura, then other things become apparent. There are, for example, a number of people who are a different metatype from their siblings. Some of those people choose to get metatype affirming surgery, whether that be bulking up to become an ork or troll, or shaving bones and muscle to appear more like an elf or dwarf. For some of those people, their aura is diminished by that surgery, for others it is not, and in fact when someone has surgery to affirm their Essence, it can result in a stronger, more vibrant aura. We think this happens when you change the outer body to match the inner Essence.

One thing that has come out of this research is that some people have restored part of their Essence by getting implants and surgery, but not in a way that has made them match up with any known metatype. Mostly these are one-of-a-kind people and modifications. One person had a black ceramic shell installed, their legs extended, and all hair and other external items of flesh removed, and their Essence became slightly more bright and vibrant, but with a distinct flavor that was not the same as any metahuman that I’ve seen before, and shocking given how much augmentation they had.

It’s even possible that there might be some metavariants in metahumanity that cannot be expressed without some sort of augmentation or surgery. We haven’t encountered it yet, but this could
be the start of a truly unique future for us, a future that might blur the lines between what we think of as natural or unnatural. I suppose it’s not that wild a proposition—as metahumanity evolved, we never evolved to live in apartment blocks eating only vitamin-boosted nutrisoy or kelp for years. We never evolved to sit in small cloth boxes working on the Matrix, or to build moon and Mars bases, yet here we are. Perhaps what is natural is for us to keep growing and changing, and as we incorporate this technology into our lives, perhaps our Essence will change to reflect that. This is quite a change in mindset, as we are used to metatypes presenting from creatures of myth and legend. Will our next stage be metatypes that express their true selves with cyberware? It would be a strange metatype that has ducted fans, ruthenium fibers, or a datajack, but who knows? And what happens if someone’s truth is something that cannot be expressed
with our current technology? There is a lot of open research here.

> This blows my mind, man! Like, maybe there is a metavariant with tracks instead of feet! Or one that lives in the Matrix all the time!
> 0rkCE0

That's right chummers in 6E Shadowrun you can absolutely identify as an attack helicopter and get rotors and some missile pods installed and it's an totally valid choice, so don't let those bigoted trannies tell you otherwise! As I said in my other post this isn't even the dumbest thing in the book IMO, there's lots of other minor things I find silly that I could bitch about, like the implanted symbiont that somehow bolsters your firewall rating. However this post is already super long and it's now past 3am and I'm halfway through a bottle of very nice scotch, so I'll leave this with no further comment for now:

 

[Alabama Gamer]

>be us
>innajungle
>fighting giant winged serpent and horde of trolls
>magus, oracle, and ranger/shaman tussling with the groundlings while the cleric and phoenix bloodrager (really just the bloodrager, Cleric McHealbot was mostly there for in-flight refueling) fight the bastard in the air
>bloodrager gets a few good rounds in
>wizard hits it with Icy Prison
>serpent fails its save
>falls out of the air like a stone, slides down the side of a cliff, lands in a deep river
>it wisely decides to stay down there with its water breathing and not have to fight us anymore
Could have been over a lot faster if I hadn't had a brain fart and forgot that Chains of Light ignores spell resistance

 

[Overly Serious]

In that specific example, he's saying if Fly is a commonly accessible spell, it'd only make sense every single mook is going to have a crossbow to deal with flying magical fuckers.

Fly is a commonly accessible spell in Shadowrun and the mooks don't have crossbows they have Ares Arms sidearms and automatic rifles. Possibly a poor choice of analogy given that the context is Shadowrun and every mage character in it picks Fly.

in general, what he's saying is that in a world where deckers are constantly breaking into computer systems...
either you have a power trip fanasty where you can wirelessly hack the complex's mainframe in realtime to track the IP with a GUI you coded in VB, or you are in a logical world where you're going to have rigorously firewalled and microsegmented networks where secure terminal access will require a strip search and prostate exam.

That doesn't really hold up. I already said that in the IT world there's a continuous tension between Security and Convenience. The most secure system is one nobody can access but that means your Japan office can't collaborate with the workers in the Seattle office. It means that people can't work from home or on a flight. On site it means that the drones can't check in wirelessly with the drone control systems, it means you can't just drop wireless motion sensors wherever suits but have to plan them when you're laying the asphalt or plastering the walls. The "logical world of microsegmented networks" isn't in fact realistic because like the grognard complaining magic is too powerful it ignores all externalities. The only way it's a "power fantasy" is in the technology being hackable at all. And who knows what the case will be with that in the future. I'd say the trend is towards being more secure and fewer exploits but then last week an exploit crosses my desk in which fucking CPU branch prediction can be exploited on AMD chips from literal Javascript in the browser. You do an operation causing it to speculatively reset a register allowing other processes to write memory to it but then you cause the speculative operation to not continue meaning that the clearing of the register 'never happened'. So now you have it back and if another process has written to that register in the meantime you have the data in it because you specifically used a command which declares the register free rather than actually clears it (the command exists for performance reasons). How do you even come up with that? So whilst I think technology is becoming more secure who is to say if in the Shadowrun setting where it is thirty decades more advanced that complexity doesn't mean there are still exploits?

ZMOT doesn't really understand 4th Hacking. It adds to what is possible, not takes away. But in doing so moves you away from the Matrix Dungeon approach. Subscriptions, wireless, clearer distinction of user levels. The hacking in 4th makes more sense, not less.

 

[Overly Serious]

Forgive the double post, they're two different responses.

@East_Clintwood I had expected horrible ideas and a lack of understanding of Shadowrun setting but I hadn't been prepared for Trannyism and Otherkin validation. This is horrifying in its explicit endorsement of the idea that nature "gets it wrong". So in older editions someone's aura didn't necessarily look directly like their physical form. The example I remember is a shaman whose apprentice was stunned to see the wizened old man upright and blazing with power in the Astral plane. So there's a wedge in there that The Lobby (I'm just going to call them that now) can use to try and force this stuff in. But it's wrong to do so. The whole "born in the wrong body" is a foundational myth of the trans lobby and it has no real basis. And this fucks with the game in so many ways. I don't even want to know what it does to game balance if a GM allows someone to identify as a cyborg and have it with no essence. Does that mean you have unholy cyberzombies as PCs as they amalgamate mages and technology? I'm really not sure I want an answer to that.

As to the T-Rex... biodrones were introduced in 4th, iirc. At least I'm pretty sure I remember first seeing them properly done in the Augmentations supplement? Maybe it was in Running Wild. Either way, they were treated pretty sensibly in that it talked about the specific niches in which it made sense to use them over the very solid and dependable traditional drone - which after all is made of metal and is way more bullet proof than some panther or whatever, doesn't get sick, doesn't need a vet, can be mass produced etcetera. They were cool and had their uses. Especially in wilderness locations without roads, dense forest, etc. They weren't remotely as silly as a T-Rex with turrets. In fact they were kind of tragic as depending on the method of dronification you might have the living animal a passive prisoner in their own body.

4th edition materials are still out there, no? I don't know why anybody would want to play 5th or 6th from what I've seen of them.

 

[King Dead]

Morale checks to see if monsters would flee a fight were in D&D from the beginning. Also something for DMs to keep in mind, Mass Suggestion is a 6th level spell, same level as Globe of Invulnerability, Planar Ally, and Create Undead. It's not some chickenshit spell that can't scare off a bunch of mooks, which something Fear, a 3rd-level spell, is entirely capable of.

After reading up on various interpretations, the way I view Suggestion/Mass Suggestion is as a magically-enhanced Charisma check of some kind (usually Persuasion), except it's the target that rolls and not the caster. If words could potentially convince someone to take a course of action, Suggestion will work. Maybe it's a little more powerful because of the magic, giving you a bit more leeway in what you can do with it, but it's not going to force someone to do something they'd absolutely never do. If you want that, learn a Dominate spell or Geas.

So yeah, I'll discuss this with the DM and see what he thinks. We've had last week and this week off due to real life stuff, so that should give him time to think it over. He might just roll with it anyway because our table is usually pretty stupidly chaotic (playing the only lawful character in a party of chaotic retards is pretty much my deal), but I'll abide by whatever he chooses. He's the DM, that's how it be.

 

[East_Clintwood]

I don't even want to know what it does to game balance if a GM allows someone to identify as a cyborg and have it with no essence

It's one of those situations I hate where the GM can, and should, shut that shit down, but shouldn't need to because it shouldn't have existed in the first place. It also creates potential problems for shit like the Shadowrun Missions campaigns (analogous to D&D adventure leagues), where GMs and players alike are supposed to adhere to the same standardized rules so as to not fuck it up if you drop in with another group.

As to the T-Rex... biodrones were introduced in 4th, iirc. At least I'm pretty sure I remember first seeing them properly done in the Augmentations supplement? Maybe it was in Running Wild.

First in Augmentation, but only a couple had actual stat blocks. Flying bird drone, cyber tiger, and then bio-bombs. They added more in Running Wild but they were basically variations on the same theme, mostly surveillance critters.

In fact they were kind of tragic as depending on the method of dronification you might have the living animal a passive prisoner in their own body.

Absolutely, then there was the bio-bomb which was tragic in a whole other way:

The drone will often be designed for short term operation, its digestive tract, reproductive organs and other features being removed to make room for more explosives

They were cool and had their uses. Especially in wilderness locations without roads, dense forest, etc.

The original cyber tiger entry specifically called this out:

Due to its vulnerability to gunfire and heavy weapons, it is usually used in confined areas with poor visibility (such as laboratory complexes or jungles) in conjunction with external battlefield sensors and building sensors to set up ambushes.

The problem is, just like with the tranny shit earlier they pushed it without thinking it through and now a whole bunch of the other ones are kinda retarded and/or pointless.

Ares has the Warhound, which is a modified hellhound that gives up dual-natured for more fire, because trading the ability to see spirits/astral projecting runners to more effectively burn down your own shit makes sense to someone I guess

Hard Corps (an Ares subsidiary) has a fucking war elephant cybered for close combat of all things. Bonus points for the fact that it comes with a kill switch for when it's control harness gets destroyed and it rampages (explicitly called out in the description). Good job it's cheap enough to be a throw away as implied at a bargain quarter million nuyen a piece.

The Azzies, despite their creepy blood ritual shit, and their whole big cat aesthetic just get a couple of pieces of genetically engineered livestock (why does that even need rules?), including a chicken that costs 11k. The future is truly a dystopia when tendies are so expensive.

Evo being the lovable tech weirdos they are created a plankton that amplifies matrix signals in water, and cats and dogs that can talk

Horizon being the un-loveable journoscum they are have paparazzi Pigeons for spying/data collection

MCT have cyber sharks (sadly without frikkin lasers on their heads), so they can zero zone facilities on or near water

Renraku have a police/guard dog that can deploy cover for it's handler, and which has a shotgun mount.

S-K have the astral guardian barghest, which is conceptually opposite to the warhound in that it focuses on the astral side of it's nature rather than the physical

Shiawase have a cybered up nigger gorilla. Just hire a fucking ork or troll like normal people you stupid fucking Japs.

Spinrad Global has a fancy improved version of a famous IRL type of horse, and then because it's 6E there's a Pegasus version that has vectored thrust cyber wings, because of course it does.

Wuxing has probably the most reasonable/least retarded one conceptually (although again kinda pointless in an actual playing capacity). Called the Pied Piper it's a kind of awakened Demon Rat that magically controls normal/Devil Rats to march them into containers for disposal.

Honestly biodrones as a whole have always been kind of a let down. I think in all my years of playing I've used one once, and even then that was mostly just because I deliberately made it part of the characters backstory/motivation after Running Wild came out. Aside from having, usually, niche uses they're just so fucking expensive. The shotgun toting cover deploying Renraku police dog I mentioned earlier costs over 100k. Meanwhile from 5E we have:

ARES MATILDA

If you pushed over a refrigerator and gave it tank treads, you’d have a Matilda. Blocky design, clumsy, and slow, the Matilda’s main claims to fame are the two blast doors—essentially riot shields—that fold out from its side, allowing officers to use it as mobile cover while advancing on reinforced positions. The Matilda comes standard with a small minigrenade launcher that can lob gas grenades ahead for disruption, leaving the officers protected. Knight Errant credits the Matilda with saving the lives of over two dozen officers this past year, absorbing fire so that they don’t have to. She ain’t pretty, but she works.
Standard Upgrades: Two riot shields, standard weapon mount, underbarrel grenade launcher, Targeting (3) autosoft

Which only costs 18k

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Right, so... popped back in here after a week, let me post a few thoughts...

First off: @East_Clintwood. Going to be making a hard agree with @Overly Serious here, that's a legit horrible change to Shadowrun. Like plenty of other people have said on this site; troons really do ruin everything that they touch; sex changes costing no essence, really? That right there goes against everything the lore says.

Also, the whole "born in the wrong body/body doesn't match your aura MAAAAAAAN" shit reeks of the whole genderspecial shit; coupled with parts of the books indicating that mankind was possible going to be making allies with the horrors one day, and... well, it makes it difficult to really jump back into the game.

I do wonder; what exactly are 6e's villains like? I mean, I imagine that the regressives and gender cultists are shoving their politics in there, as well; I know that sites like RPGnet still act like Humanis is this massive worldwide threat, but are there any actual threats in 6e?


Also, I had an issue in D&D recently; the campaign my group started recently has been going rather well, honestly, and we've all got ideas on where our current characters are going to be developing. However, another player, from my WoD group, was thinking about joining; we've been having difficulties in figuring out which class he should run, though.

Gonna put it behind spoilers;

Spoiler: D&D Thoughts and Troubles

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm taking part in a D&D game with my friends, and this game was going to be a story-focused game; there's going to be SOME combat, but it's mostly about the story so far. Said story is essentially a roadtrip; our motley cast of characters are travelling together across the game world, adventuring for fun, basically. There's no real world-ending threats or evil villains that we need to hurry and destroy - at least, not right now; it's just a group of adventurers travelling together for the hell of it. The cast so far is:

- Tiefling Warlock - Hexblade pact

- Half-Orc Fighter - Battlemaster

- Gnome Artificer - Artillerist

- Tabaxi Rogue - Arcane Trickster

- Elf Bard - College of Lore

- Human Wizard - Subclass Undecided (Me)

So, we've got a rather diverse crew here, good for pretty much any situation; it was something of an unofficial rule for this campaign for everyone to pick a different class. Asa result, we've all got some fairly creative ideas on how to proceed.

Now, a seventh player is thinking about joining; he's a friend of ours, a part of my WoD crew actually. Bit new to D&D by comparison, so he's struggling to figure out a class. His character was going to be a Noble; a hedonistic aristocrat that joined the group basically for the hell of it, looking for adventure.

That's where the difficulty is coming in at; out of the remaining classes left, we have Barbarian, Cleric, Paladin, Druid, Monk, Ranger, and Sorcerer. However, our potential new guy has been passing some ideas back and forth, and... well, there's a few difficulties.

For starters, Barbarian seems like it would be right up his alley, but the new guy admitted that he was thinking his noble would be more of a "city" person, not a countryman. Still on the table, but he's looking at other classes first.

Cleric and Paladin he doesn't have much interest in; they don't really fit the character idea that he had in mind, and he admitted that the Oath system of the Paladin was also a turn-off. He did show a LOT of interest in making an Oathbreaker Paladin, though; problem is, since they're more-or-less locked into being evil from what we've read, I don't think he'll really use them, unless we can figure out/homebrew some stuff.

Druid and Ranger... after what we've all dealt with in the WoD franchise, especially with Werewolf, the new guy admitted that he REALLY wasn't wanting to use either class.

Monk is another class he's considering, but he's having issues figuring out how to integrate it with the Noble character in a way that he likes; good class, just not what he really wants for this guy.

Lastly, Sorcerer is a very good pick, but we already have a number of mages in our group.

So... yeah, there's issues and stigma with each of the remaining classes available. It's not like the guy is giving us much grief over it, mind; he's stated that he'd be willing to sit the game out if he couldn't find a class to play, so not finding a class isn't the end of the world. Still, would be a shame if he couldn't find a class.

If anyone wants to offer advice, feel free.

 

[Pendulous Dong]

If anyone wants to offer advice, feel free.

Sorcerer is immediately what I think of when I think "hedonistic noble." He doesn't have to work for his powers or even believe in anything, he got them by sheer accident of birth. Sorcerers have access to a bunch of support spells that become even more useful with metamagic. Maybe multiclass him with fighter for a proper noble that knows how to fight.
Also, he could take Catapult and flick sacks of pennies at commoners for 3d8 bludgeoning damage.

 

[East_Clintwood]

I know that sites like RPGnet still act like Humanis is this massive worldwide threat,

Those people are retarded, Humanis was never a big threat. The biggest thing Humanis ever pulled off (The Night of Rage), was less about them and more about the mass hysteria/panic that gripped the world. The biggest individual thing they've ever managed was the Sears Tower bombing which was ~40years ago as of the current timeline. Other than that the only even attempt at a major operation was their alleged involvement in a couple of coups aimed at trying to restore the old USA, but again those were ~20 years ago.

but are there any actual threats in 6e?

Surprisingly there's a few, as CGL haven't been shy about shaking the world up (even if it's not always good). I can make that into my next post. It's just a shame that we'll now likely never get to see the real threat that Shadowrun deserves, the Horrors.