Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: SmilinIrish on <05-09-19/1209:01>
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5th edition was plagued by poor editing, freelancers working in a vacuum (resulting in poorly coordinated rules mechanics), an apparent lack of playtesting, and lack of errata to fix errors . Prominent members of this gaming community often made very logical cases about why some mechanics were very poor.
I'm wondering if any CGL employees or freelancers can speak to these questions
Do we have any reason to believe that 6th edition editing will be better this time around?
A game like D&D 5th was extensively playtested, with feedback and changes resulting from feedback. Obviously, there was no open playtest for 6th, as it seems to be a surprise that we have a new edition at all. But was there a decent pool of experienced Shadowrunners that playtested these rules?
I saw a comment that an errata procedure was already in place. Is this the case?
I'm not completely excited for a new edition, I liked a lot of things about 5th, and was hoping for an "anniversary edition" to clean up a lot of things. I like some of what I've heard about 6th, not sure about other things. I've only played fifth, so I have no attachment to "legacy" mechanics. I liked initiative as it was, and I like sustaining spells, and handling drain differently from the casting roll. I'm going to keep an open mind and see the new system as it comes out. Ultimately, I'll be playing whatever edition my group chooses to play. I'm just hoping for a better product this time around.
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Sustaining and drain rolls are still in. Theory is some QSR rules caused confusion.
As for the errata stuff: unless you assume Catalyst would lie about it.
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Thanks for the reply Michael. Were you involved in playtesting? Is admitting to that something that is likely blocked by an NDA?
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There is an errata process in place for 6e and the team is already hard at work on it.
I just started reviewing 6e last night.
I cannot speak to any playtesting as I have no idea of anything beyond errata.
I haven't even read enough of the core book yet to understand if this edition will be better, worse, or something else.
All I can say is that at least we will have errata on publication...fingers crossed.
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I can't say either how complete the errata process will be by Gen Con, but indeed 6e is different than 5e in that there's already a team in place and working on it.
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Thanks for the reply Michael. Were you involved in playtesting? Is admitting to that something that is likely blocked by an NDA?
I am not posting anything that comes directly from playtesting, I am basing all of my statements on already-publicly-delivered material. Banshee has been providing clarifications both on this forum and in a gather-document, regarding stuff including Drain and Sustaining. He's been involved with a significant bit of the book.
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Yes, I have been involved with Sixth World from very early on, so while there are still plenty of things that I can not discuss in detail due to NDA until the book actually goes public I have been at least trying to play damage control on clarifying what information is out there.
I can say there was a very open communication team that worked collaboratively to develop the basic rules from day one
Editing is definitely better, perfect no but better yes
Yes we had a dedicated group of playtesters, it was a closed group with mixed participants from casual players, to CDT team members, and game developers themselves. We spent over a year going through various incarnations.
And yes the errata team is already in place and working on it
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Thank you so much for the straighforward answers. Very relieved to hear about the misunderstanding about magic changes.
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As someone fairly new to Shadowrun, and having seen the comments on 5e, the responses to this post inspire hope for 6e to be a better system that listens to feedback. Regardless, I have fallen fast for both the setting of shadowrun and the 5e rules, and some of the new changes (such as the mentioned initiative) I'm not a huge fan of. Home rules exist for a reason though, and I look forward to the new system! (Worst case scenario is new tech to convert!)
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SR has always had needlessly overcomplicated and unbalanced rules. SR did well with each edition change previously, but this feels like it will be even more unbalanced and replace one brand of complication (every modifier) with another (edge, with varying exchange rates and constant comparisons to determine earnings). The unarmed vs. melee thing seems particularly egregious - the kind of thing literally any playtesting would've exposed - so I'm hoping that something has been missing from descriptions so far.
I mean, I'll buy it because I buy everything SR. I'm as big a fan of moving to new editions as anyone I know, but this just seems off. Hoping things aren't as bad as I and others seem to fear.
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Ok guys lets be cautiously optimistic here. Its super early to be all doom and gloom about 6th. We simply dont have enough info as the only people who have a clear picture of the rules are bound by NDA's and cant say much about them.
2nd lets think about the State of any edition of SR with just the core rule book available. Most of them had problems or weaknesses that got fixed by the expansion books like the cyber book, the magic book ect. I see everyone going crazy over the new initiative system and its seems mostly due to perceived loss of actions and OMG my Wired to the max street sam will not on average be able to take 6 actions anymore he will only get 2! We dont have enough info about how this works out to judge just how good or bad this is and we also dont know what the Cyber book will bring out right now the big thing I see is the 4 minors = a Major exchange rate. 1 piece of cyber that improves this to 3 to 1 or even 2 to 1 would quickly bring you back up to previous edition action totals. And we simply dont know if that exists or not.
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I'm not even remotely worried about the changes to actions. Everyone in my group has 3 actions now, barring a spectacularly good or somewhat bad roll. The changes on the matrix side sound great so far, too
Currently, I'm worried about: 1) cost-benefit balance in the game for similar actions (e.g. melee vs. unarmed); and 2) whether edge is actually worse than the clunky modifiers it replaced. I've never worried about SR releasing a bad change before, even in the information blackout before GenCon, but this one has me nervous.
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SR has always had needlessly overcomplicated and unbalanced rules. SR did well with each edition change previously, but this feels like it will be even more unbalanced and replace one brand of complication (every modifier) with another (edge, with varying exchange rates and constant comparisons to determine earnings). The unarmed vs. melee thing seems particularly egregious - the kind of thing literally any playtesting would've exposed - so I'm hoping that something has been missing from descriptions so far.
I mean, I'll buy it because I buy everything SR. I'm as big a fan of moving to new editions as anyone I know, but this just seems off. Hoping things aren't as bad as I and others seem to fear.
The thing I somewhat hang my hope on is our understanding of the rules comes from one groups reading of them. Catalyst has a history of making their rules a bit obfuscated. So hopefully yes str effects melee damage not just unarmed.
The play seemed to indicate it’s a flat damage and that unarmed is str based but bone lacing replaces it with a flat damage.
Now every edition I felt bone lacing added too much to damage for what is essentially brass knucks. I’m not sure a flat 3 dmg for titanium reflects that and honestly 1 str brass knucks being the same as a heavy pistol seems insane. A troll swinging a axe hitting the same as a pixie insane.
Given that they went overboard in making str effect damage in 5e I expected a correction. Not affecting damage at all would be crazy pants. It’s possible though that it’s indirect in that str is the stat for your melee die pool. But again the play indicated it was agility.
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...my concern is Missions changing to 6E midstream in the Neo Tokyo arc where suddenly all you have available is what is in the core rules and nothing more.
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Tokyo is most likely going to become double statted
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...my concern is Missions changing to 6E midstream in the Neo Tokyo arc where suddenly all you have available is what is in the core rules and nothing more.
Legitimate concern. On the gm side of things I’m happy for a reset to core. There was so much crap I was having a hard time planning for things. A lot of you can do what now moments.
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I'm tentative about this. Inclined me to look up my old Dumpshock account, saw activity was (expectedly) low over there so I hopped over here. Its been a few years. But honestly with each edition (since the first!) I ended up spending less money and having less patience in re-filling my library. I've noticed approaches I like end, and approaches that no one seems to like come in and persist, and its been sort of a back and forth for the 3 decades.
On one hand I can see that economically its probably not as easy to put out nice fluffy location books like before, and my sense was that in the later editions by the time they did...the edition was on its last legs before going to a new one. I've piecemealed locational stuff across editions as they come, but keeping track of all of it can be rough. I don't know how things will be, but I'll probably be giving it an initial shot.
...btw am I going to have to do verification on every post or is that just because I'm still new to the board?
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There have been a few Shadows in Focus books though?
Anyway, it's a Captain Chaos filter where you face verification whenever you aren't 100% optimistic. That or it ends at... 10? posts.
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I did always like the Shadows in Focus stuff. tho...yeesh, the last one was what almost 4 years ago...yeeks, Tir was like 7? I did appreciate that other sourcebooks did some updates of areas, Conspiracy did DC and London, etc but I admit I always found it difficult to get a sense of the state of the world. Not really sure the best way to address it though. I imagine we all have our own varying levels of homebrew/etc and then try to reconcile when a book with canon-tier stuff comes up again.
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...my concern is Missions changing to 6E midstream in the Neo Tokyo arc where suddenly all you have available is what is in the core rules and nothing more.
Legitimate concern. On the gm side of things I’m happy for a reset to core. There was so much crap I was having a hard time planning for things. A lot of you can do what now moments.
...yeah I'm still converting the major NPCs and gear from the various 3E sourcebooks that wasn't redone for 5E (particularly the military hardware presented in the "Soldiers of Fortune" section of SOTA 2063 and spy stuff from the "Games of State" section in SOTA 2064)
The the campaign is pretty much set in the timeline from Shadows of Europe and Shadows of Asia (Russia background material) before Crash 2.0 though the Wireless Matrix is already a part of everyday life in the early 2060s as "real life" was beginning to eclipse fiction in some aspects (I had a notebook computer with a slot for an external wireless card back then).
I also kept Dikote and the Ranger-X (didn't like how bows are handled in 5E).
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...btw am I going to have to do verification on every post or is that just because I'm still new to the board?
Anyway, it's a Captain Chaos filter where you face verification whenever you aren't 100% optimistic. That or it ends at... 10? posts.
I think it ended at my 6th post.
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I will also say I've always had a fondness for Riggers, and hope there might be some mechanics to help them out a bit. Example, I recall some of the Artifacts Hunt stuff, which resulted in a lot of travel and checks and kind of moved around a lot. This ran into the issue of "Ok, what about the rigger?" He'll have to leave most of his gear at home and hope to find substitutes in the place he's at. Now, to a degree everyone else in the party generally had to as well, at least potentially in terms of weapons/gear. But the 'big ticket' items of most chars are already connected to them and more easily transported. The Cybersam has all his stuff attached, even the big ticket cyberdeck for the decker is easier to hide, or even implant in the ruleset. Technos, adepts and mages are pretty much good to go off a plane.
Then you get things like, ok...lets say you manage to load your rigger vehicle on the transport plane and make it to Chicago, the way the story is otherwise scripted its kind of 'one way' before you generally take the convenient way out to the next locale. Its also time sensitive so not really set towards 'travel back out of the nuke zone to civilization, then get on a plane with your stuff again'.
To a degree its less an issue if you're a microdrone-primary type rigger that can carry everything with them. But otherwise its one of those, "sorry you spent money customizing your vehicle, its kinda stuck in your home town.' and then in general more often than not I think its fair to say any campaign involving vehicles, either used or transported on, like big ships, tbirds, passenger zepplins/etc will probably have an 'invasion/hijacking/attack' thing at some point.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if Rigger stuff got a bit handwaved for ease of use regardless of location. No idea how to 'logically' do it within reason of a setting tho.
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I will also say I've always had a fondness for Riggers, and hope there might be some mechanics to help them out a bit. Example, I recall some of the Artifacts Hunt stuff, which resulted in a lot of travel and checks and kind of moved around a lot. This ran into the issue of "Ok, what about the rigger?" He'll have to leave most of his gear at home and hope to find substitutes in the place he's at. Now, to a degree everyone else in the party generally had to as well, at least potentially in terms of weapons/gear. But the 'big ticket' items of most chars are already connected to them and more easily transported. The Cybersam has all his stuff attached, even the big ticket cyberdeck for the decker is easier to hide, or even implant in the ruleset. Technos, adepts and mages are pretty much good to go off a plane.
Then you get things like, ok...lets say you manage to load your rigger vehicle on the transport plane and make it to Chicago, the way the story is otherwise scripted its kind of 'one way' before you generally take the convenient way out to the next locale. Its also time sensitive so not really set towards 'travel back out of the nuke zone to civilization, then get on a plane with your stuff again'.
To a degree its less an issue if you're a microdrone-primary type rigger that can carry everything with them. But otherwise its one of those, "sorry you spent money customizing your vehicle, its kinda stuck in your home town.' and then in general more often than not I think its fair to say any campaign involving vehicles, either used or transported on, like big ships, tbirds, passenger zepplins/etc will probably have an 'invasion/hijacking/attack' thing at some point.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if Rigger stuff got a bit handwaved for ease of use regardless of location. No idea how to 'logically' do it within reason of a setting tho.
So if I understand the problem correctly, riggers frequently get caught without what makes them riggers, due to plots in the adventures and/or it not being taken into account what happens with their stuff? What about if, instead of transporting their transport and other big items, they just negotiate the temporary use of similar equipment at the target destination? That way no one has to worry about how it all gets there, or how to get it back if the story makes them leave rapidly.
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I wouldn't say frequently but it is correct that official adventures often do not keep Riggers in mind. From distance deadlines and carry-on restrictions to ambushes and more, often a run breaks from Rigger involvement and sometimes a Rigger can't do a thing. Enemies set up a bomb if there is no guard? Spydrone caught it. Enemy far away? Drones are fast even in a jungle. They're not kept in mind enough with the possible approaches and that is a flaw for many writers. Why do we even have Coyotes?
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Yeah, never really going to be an easy fix. On the flipside if you make it too easy then suddenly the Rigger gets to be rolling with Anti-Vehicle tier weaponry all the time. "Yeah, and then my walker unleashed with its 30 mm cannon....and well...the fight was over."
With my own builds while I might have made a 'vehicle rigger' in the early days, nowadays its more "think of a Rigger like a Division SHD agent with their drones or turrets/etc that once in awhile gets to drive something."
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In a short campaign I basically played The Transporter. Focused primarily on my Gladius with its machine-gun. Was fun. I ended up playing him more film-wise than tv-wise though. ;D
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In a short campaign I basically played The Transporter. Focused primarily on my Gladius with its machine-gun. Was fun. I ended up playing him more film-wise than tv-wise though. ;D
The Statham films are the only way to go when referencing "The Transporter"...
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In a short campaign I basically played The Transporter. Focused primarily on my Gladius with its machine-gun. Was fun. I ended up playing him more film-wise than tv-wise though. ;D
The Statham films are the only way to go when referencing "The Transporter"...
Eh, tv-series are nice for a more civilised version. But I was definitely not civilised.
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Not much you can do about large vehicles. But I think they should emphasize drones as more easily modifiable. Like you just snap weapons on and off. Also they should be able to fold or pack up easy. It’s as big as a troll deployed but it folds up into a man sized box. Fitting most your drones in cargo then wouldn’t be a issue. Have pretty much all drones have a non combat purpose. That’s not a assault drone with twin mmgs. It’s my mobile trid studio.
Yeah you paid extra for baggage due to weight But that could be negotiated in. And then when you land you have to scrounge up the same thing the other runners need to, namely guns.
I’ve never seen a pure vehicle rigger before. Even the transporter models made sure they were bad asses when not rigging. But if they are in the campaign, fudging it may be a bit more work.
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Re: Riggers
Play a car thief rigger with a couple of Drones. Drive it like you stole it. Steal something, use it for an hour or a night, ditch it. Steal another vehicle when needed.
And I don't mean the stupid Change Ownership and sell the thing. Hack a Vehicle, turn off Wireless, use the Vehicle for whatever you needed it for, leave it shot up and smoking in a pile of Rubble.
A Technomancer with Skinlink does this without really any effort. Best Rigger ever because it lets the GM shoot the car to H&G without making the Rigger Player cry.
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As an aside for Riggers, they need to work on the repair costs. I can't remember if it was ever fixed in 5e as none of my players bothered playing one due to the repair costs.
Of course the ultimate rigger was my mage rigger, who used clairvoyance and magic fingers. Oh yeah, invisible done. Watch out for my floating gun of doom. That and disposable drones AKA spirits.
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I always liked the concept of the rigger overwatch. using drones to expand sensor ranges and as team scouting support letting the team do all the heavy lifting with more tactical information to go by. Plus sensor style drones where much cheaper if they got gunned down to replace, leaving me more money to build the mobile command center for the team.
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I like how people are defending the Rigger position, by pointing out all that is wrong with Riggers. ;)
"Car Thief" Rigger, "Hack the Car." That is a non-starter in 5e. Zero percent of "Rigger gear" has an Attack or Sleaze Rating. Meaning the Rigger either has to shell out huge amounts of Nuyen for a Deck, or use one of two workarounds. (A dongle for their commlink, or Persona Firmware mod a Stealth Tag.)
Then, the Rigger has to dip into a skillset that isn't theirs to do the hacking.
Unfortunately, Hacking is pretty much required, unless the Rigger wants to use an extended Hardware Test to disable wireless. And that might be a skillset outside their own, depending on build.
"Technomancer with Skinlink" as Car Thief Rigger. Thank you for acknowledging that Techno's are better at Rigging than Riggers. It reads as if this won't improve in 6e, as Banshee has stated that Technos start out of the gate of CharGen as fully functioning Deckers with the neat tools that are Techno only (Complex Forms and Sprites.)
After one, maybe two Submersions, the Techno is a baby Rigger (unless 6e has changed the dynamic a lot, more than enough to fill the roll of Rigger) that can grow into a full fledged Rigger with enough Submersions. (Probably 3, maybe 4.) All the while, never giving up full Decker and the neat stuff that is Techno only.
I still have to see what all was done with Riggers, but right now it reads as if Riggers are still the trash Archetype.
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"Technomancer with Skinlink" as Car Thief Rigger. Thank you for acknowledging that Techno's are better at Rigging than Riggers. It reads as if this won't improve in 6e, as Banshee has stated that Technos start out of the gate of CharGen as fully functioning Deckers with the neat tools that are Techno only (Complex Forms and Sprites.)
After one, maybe two Submersions, the Techno is a baby Rigger (unless 6e has changed the dynamic a lot, more than enough to fill the roll of Rigger) that can grow into a full fledged Rigger with enough Submersions. (Probably 3, maybe 4.) All the while, never giving up full Decker and the neat stuff that is Techno only.
I still have to see what all was done with Riggers, but right now it reads as if Riggers are still the trash Archetype.
When technomancers were first mentioned to me, the guy telling me about Shadowrun said that in the previous edition there was something you could take at character creation (some kind of machine spirit or special path) to make a drone-technomancer? Did those not get reintroduced in 5th edition? If not, do you think those will be in 6th edition? I'm a bit excited by the idea of having my first character be someone who can do some hacking and drone work, and I'm trying to decide whether to use the cyber or technomancer path. From the sounds of it, the cyber option suffers a lot under the current edition's rules?
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In SR5 you can use a submersion to have the same benefit as those with a Control Rig implant, allowing you to jump in and rig.
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In SR5 you can use a submersion to have the same benefit as those with a Control Rig implant, allowing you to jump in and rig.
Submersion? Is that something you can do at character creation?
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Teeeeeechnically no, but you can either puppy-eye the GM (official-approved houserule for those desiring it), or keep some karma saved up in chargen so you can do so after 1 or 2 runs.
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Teeeeeechnically no, but you can either puppy-eye the GM (official-approved houserule for those desiring it), or keep some karma saved up in chargen so you can do so after 1 or 2 runs.
I might have to go with option #2, as I think I might be playing in the official campaign thingy (Seasons?).
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I have always been disappointed in the Rigger role in the Shadowrun setting. Maybe because my initial exposure to the the entire genre was Gibson's character Cowboy from "Burning Chrome". Sort of set the tone in my head. For me it is a critical archetype. Hoping this edition can give it some relevance again.
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Well in 5E, my perspective on the problem with riggers was threefold:
1) Technomancers do the Rigger's job better than the Rigger. They can do everything a Rigger can do, PLUS they can proactively defend their matrix connections. PLUS they get magic powers repackaged as "techno-magic".
2) Drones are pure bunk compared to Spirits. Granted, high force Spirits are ridiculously OP compared to everything not just drones... but 5E doesn't make you pay enough to get a high force spirit. F6 for no drain is about what a well built mage should expect, and you should be getting a F9 for no meaningful price other than a point of edge. There'll never be a drone that can do what a F6 or F9 spirit can do.
3) Riggers are largely unique in that their toys can get broken. Generally speaking the sniper's rifle isn't destroyed. The sammy's cyberarm doesn't get destroyed. They might get bricked, sure, if you're sloppy. But fixing matrix damage is virtually free. And of course, see #2 about the "price" of fixing a broken spirit.
SRM has a 4th problem for riggers:
4) Transportation is usually hand-waived. SRMs have to fit completely inside a 4 hour play session, and figuring out how the team is going from point A to point B is usually just ignored or fiat'ed in favor of other kinds of challenges/action. (even worse: the fiat way too often involves circumstances that denies a rigger his vehicle!) And from a writing perspective, it's something of a gamble to devote a chase scene in an adventure. What happens if the table doesn't HAVE a driver?
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They put SSDR on the errata team? I guess we will all need to be prepared for sapient dead thing in 6e lol.
To be fair vehicle rules and repair rules were a garbage fire across most of 5e. The bike truck example was my favorite.
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To be fair vehicle rules and repair rules were a garbage fire across most of 5e. The bike truck example was my favorite.
Do I even want to know what that one is referring to?
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A semi-truck driver can get sent to the hospital by colliding with a scooter. This is because the damage you soak is based off the Body of the vehicle you are in, not what you crash into. Thus the person on the scooter gets a twisted ankle while the driver of the semi goes to the morgue. It's a particularly egregious example of a rule that didn't work in 5th Edition.
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Ah, yes, that matter. Very easily corrected by houseruling that the crash damage is based on the body of the other vehicle.
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They put SSDR on the errata team? I guess we will all need to be prepared for sapient dead thing in 6e lol.
To be fair vehicle rules and repair rules were a garbage fire across most of 5e. The bike truck example was my favorite.
He’s being kept in check :p
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He’s being kept in check :p
I hope so I'd rather not see the baby thrown out with bath water b/c common sense just didn't fit someone's logic.
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It’s a team effort, meaning one person cannot block progress.
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Please keep comments civil, especially when talking about other users
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It’s a team effort, meaning one person cannot block progress.
I am glad to hear that.