[Notion]

From the mods:

This poster is no longer welcome on the boards and any post from them, or from duplicitous accounts will be removed from the boards.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

My personal theory is Shadowrun, originating in the 1980s, still retains the "Strong GM" paradigm that dominated early RPGs.  "Strong" vs "Weak" GM paradigms differ primarily in how much weight is given to the Universal RPG Rule Zero: The GM is always right.

In writing a game with a Strong GM mindset, consistency in technical language and game concepts is less necessary (or even desirable) than a game intended for a "Weak GM" mindset where the players have more of an expectation of the rules being applied as THEY see fit.

In other words: Shadowrun relies on the GM to make his own rulings on fuzzy issues rather than attempting to eliminate them in the first place.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

In other words: The whole thing is a scam?

No.  What I was saying is when you design a game, you have to make certain strategic decisions.  With regards to eliminating ambiguity, you have to realize you'll never completely eliminate it.  You could write a 1,000 page core rulebook and you will still always have interactions between rules that require adjudication.  In fact, the more rules you have, the more interactions you'll introduce, so eliminating ambiguity entirely is a fool's errand (for a RPG).  You'll always need a GM to just say "Frag it.  THIS is how it's gonna work for our game..."  And there comes a point where noone's gonna read, much less play, a game with a rulesbook that's Too Big. 

I like to point to Pathfinder as the contemporary poster child for "Weak GM" games.  Nothing's wrong with Pathfinder, but they do chase the fool's errand.  And despite that (not to mention having a CRB just as big as SR's 5th ed), you still have to default to the GM to tell you how often your Barbarian feels the need to answer nature's call while on night watch, for example.  A player in a "Weak GM" game system might call foul over the GM telling him something from "outside the rules", or even worse "in conflict with the rules" is going on in the game.  It's a different mind-set.

You have to make certain strategic decisions when publishing a RPG.  You only have a finite amount of resources to develop your game.  I don't know if this is specifically what happened with 5th ed, but perhaps a decision was made that instead of more money being allocated to play-testing and technical writing, maybe more money was given to prose writers for fiction/fluff and artists for eye-candy to help make the rulebook more presentable.  I think it's honestly questionable as to whether a hypothetical SR5 core rulebook with less fiction/art but more water-tight rules would in truth be an improved product.  Because again who wants to read several hundred boring pages, and any holes in the rules that don't affect this particular table's game-play are moot, and any holes that do have the GM to decree fixes that work for that game.

Another thought with regards to Strong vs Weak GM paradigms: Organized play has the Weakest GM around, and rightly so because a GM at SRM (or PFS) is really only a guest GM running a session in someone else's ongoing campaign.  Take a look at the 4 page 5th Edition Errata doc (last udated 2014) and the 80+ page SRM FAQ (last updated this week) as a case in point demonstrating how differently Strong vs Weak GM games work.

[PiXeL01]

Please tell just how long and which role playing games you have been playing that just work in every way position without ambiguity and the possibility for GMs and players to have a different interpretation of the rules?

As for a car there are strict standards any vehicle must meet before it can even have a prototype built. Usually in the car industry the company are a lot bigger, with more money to spend, and with consistent teams.
Catalyst founded SR5 by Kickstarter, every product is written by an army of freelancers allowing less time for proofreading, playtesting, and sometimes there’s even conflict in vision. The result wasn’t pretty but far from a scam.
The freelancers usually spend a good amount of team after each release to clarify some ambitiety that might exist.

Furthermore now there’s a team of fans and writers who’s voluntary assignment is to fix the rules or at least bring them into some common shape. The people in this team are of every conviction towards gaming which leads to some interesting discussions.

Shadowrun lives because of the love for setting the fans have. Without them there would not be any 5th edition. It was never a con or a scam. Dig through the forum and you’ll see.

If you don’t like the rules but love the setting then “hack” it. Or walk away.

[Jayde Moon]

So right now, playing feels more like "Uhm, I dont know if my character is legal." For pretty much EVERY character concept I would want to play....

snip

... I was wondering, if that's just me? How is it for everyone else? Do you also suffer from severe Tilting, while trying to make sense of what you read? Or is the system sufficient for you to enjoy you? Would you drop shadowrun for a product with a similar setting but consistent mechanics?

I don't know that I've seen anyone make the complaint that they can't figure out a 'legal' build for practically any concept they can think to play...

But on a personal level?  Nope.  I have no problem understanding the rules, applying them, or extrapolating from the given rules arbitrations that make sense to myself and to players.

Bravi, SSDR, on communicating your sort of 'philisophical' statement regarding reliance on GMs to be able to adjudicate beyond expressly stated and unambiguous rulesets.

I don't think the rules in SR are ambiguous.  I do think that sometimes the right answer is buried beneath layers of jargon meant to create an answer but simply confusing the issue... or hidden beneath multiple pieces found scattered across the rulebook.

But none of that has sropped me or any player I've had the pleasure to GM, from complete mobs to 1st Edition OGs across home tables, convention tables, and across the country.

Thousands and thousands of players are not finding the same frustrations you are, so it leads me to wonder... what are these concepts that you just can't seem to suss out through the mechanics?

[Reaver]

...
For Noble Sacrifice, how exactly is the Bonus-Force for Spirits interacting with Summoning or already summoned spirits? Can I "buff" existing Spirits? Even Allied Spirits? Can I break the two-times-magic limit using noble sacrifice?
(Details here:) https://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=11514.msg508865#msg508865

Forbidden Arcana Page 46. Bold by me.

NOBLE SACRIFICE
Superficially similar to blood magic, the noble sacrifice
metamagic is actually its opposite. The Awakened
individual with noble sacrifice is convinced of
the inherent goodness of risking harm to one’s self
for the benefit of others. As such, when they are
suffering on behalf of others, they become much
more powerful than they would be otherwise.
This metamagic requires the mage to take a
Free Action to activate. Once activated, the mage
designates a metahuman individual or individuals
within X meters of themselves (where X is Magic
Rating). When any of these individuals take damage,
it applies instead to the magician, who may
resist it normally, as if the damage was happening
directly to them (before the designated individual(
s) do their own resistance rolls). Their own stats,
skills, and attributes are used to resist the damage.

Every three boxes of Physical or Stun damage suffered
by the magician in this way generate one
Protection Magic Point that must be used before
the end of the next Combat Turn.

Protection Magic Points generated by noble
sacrifice can be used in any of the following ways,
in any combination:
• Increase the Force of a non-offensive spell
or ritual being cast by one per point; this can
exceed twice the caster’s Magic Rating.
• Reduce the amount of drain a Health spell
inflicts by one per point, to a minimum of 0.
• Increase the Force of a summoned spirit by
one per point.
Additionally, if the magician has not attacked
an enemy this round, they receive +4 dice to Spellcasting,
Counterspelling, and Ritual Spellcasting
tests using Protection Magic Points.

First off, the upper portion notes how long you "store" a PMP for... this doesn't give you enough time to summon AND apply a PMP..... So it must be used on an existing Spirit. It doesn't give an exemption to the Spirit Summoning rules; and since you are not summoning a spirit but enhancing it, why would it?

Yes, this applies could be applied to any Summoned spirit... And that is the kicker. An Ally spirit isn't a Summoned Spirit, it's an ALLY Spirit.... There is a difference.
Just what is that difference? Look up Ally Spirits.

[Marcus]

My game are consistent, b/c I run the rule consistently.  It's not some kind mysterious situation. You wrote the run ahead of time. You know what the characters skills are. I'm very rarely surprised, and when I am perfectly willing to give the PC's the win. If the player have a good plan and their rolls make it work, then it works. Sure I'll throw a curve ball or two just keep them on their feet.

If they have a terrible plan, and/or the rolls screw'em, I'll do the best a can as a GM, to help close the run with the best action and most logical out comes possible and hopeful with as few pc deaths as possible.

No rules set is perfect, anyone who writes rules knows this. Something are arbitrary, and some folks will just read something and decide it means the exact opposite of what the writer intended. That's life and it's no big deal.

I don't think it's question of a strong or weak dms. Those stereotypes are very much out in this day and age. Modern GMs are facilitators of story, not crazy tpk artists. The old ways had their time and place, but the industry has changed.

[PiXeL01]

Shadowrun is about teamwork, nothing competitive about it. The players are a bunch of professional criminals hired because each of them possesses a talent which might be needed for the team as a whole to complete the task Mr(s) Johnson had in mind.
The archetypes are not meant to compete but compliment each other. It is not about racking up the highest number of kills, but taking care of your objective so your chummer can handle his.

[Streetsam_Crunch]

As one who has designed games (for personal use), contributed thoughts to many published games (like any good player/GM does with access to the internet, or a friend in the industries ear ) house ruled *every* system I've ever run (because the players will always come up with something the rules doesn't specifically cover) and just enjoyed playing tabletop RPG's for going on over 35 years now... no system is ever perfect, and while there are been some actually published systems so bad I can't house rule a way to playability, that doesn't represent the majority of published systems I have played or run. Shadowrun is actually pretty good in that respect (and Catalyst's indexes are often obscenely magnificent- SO GLAD I picked up that core book master index edition this year...)

You say your self-written stuff is clear by its simplicity, but that is for *you* who wrote it, read it, and applied it. Could you give your system to someone else and guarantee they'd come to the same conclusions you did in the wording? Would it cover EVERY situation they may run into during a game?

Or can you possibly imagine that someone could read it and find a different conclusion that you didn't intend, but they like better (particularly as a player trying to pull something off)? As one who has played games, playtested games, designed games, and dealt with folks in the industry of making games, I can tell you, what you *think* you wrote isn't always clear OR simple just because YOU understand it easily. Keep in mind, I'm presuming you wrote your rules out thoroughly as if anyone could pick them up and run a game. If it's in some kind of shorthand where you know the rest of the details as they come up, it doesn't count.

This isn't bashing you, but pointing out that most tabletop games are written to be as clear as the writer intended, the editor thought was as foolproof as far as they could tell, it didn't come up over multiple playtests before hitting the press...

...and then at its presentation at a convention one of the groups breaks the whole thing because they use something in a way that worked as written, but none of the writers, line editors, play-testers, or even their game group thought about THAT specific combination of things that all made sense, but in conjunction brings everything to a record skipping moment of "What did these players just do???" I've had it happen to me, and as one who has caused it at more than one table (some of those official Catalyst tables ) over the years, there's no set of rules that can't be somehow bent or broken beyond expectation.

So yes, there's sometimes ambiguity, because any smart GM will read into the 'spirit' of the rules and draw a line where it makes sense. If the rules are too rigid, they snap under the rules-lawyer who will use their rigidity against the GM. Please note: This isn't a scam. This is a good game designer giving some leverage to the GM's so they can partially set the rules at the line they're most comfortable with, while giving them guidelines they can follow. Some go more 'hardcore' and interpret them to the letter with no exception (as seems to be your style) versus a GM that is much 'looser' with the rules and interprets them based on any given situation and desired story outcome (which I'm more inclined to do). I usually find that even if there's not a specific rule in any given system for X thing, that there's enough information on so many other things, I can extrapolate a version that fits within the spirit of the system... I also like picking up the expansion books for the purpose of getting more ideas both as a player and GM, or for clarifications on those things that they haven't covered yet (and folks have asked for that they go "Oh, yeah, we should put something out for that").

Following this in mind, I have yet to have shown up at GenCon with a character that doesn't fall within 'rules legal'. In fact, if you have to stop and think "This concept sounds broken, is this rules legal?" then it most likely isn't. Just saying. As others have pointed out, of course, this depends on who the GM is as well. If you're running it, you have final say. If you're a player, then it probably depends on what that GM will allow (or what you can browbeat them into, as SSDR pointed out).

Designing a car is a bad analogy to tabletop gaming. Even comparing it to a board game or card game where the cards MUST balance with each other or it doesn't work isn't quite right. There's a little more leeway built in because it's generally about storytelling with a group of people. If everyone is playing to the spirit of the story the GM wants to tell, and they trust the GM to adjudicate fairly and tell a good story, balance finds itself. Sounds stupid, but true.

Like PiXeL01 said, Tabletop RPG's are not (usually) a competitive style of game that requires rigid balance required to make sure everything is equal. Characters are so flexible that players can make bad choices, or design characters that don't fit the campaign that's presented to them (a pacifist field medic in a political drama where the team is assassins doing wetwork to keep order, for example- unless they really want to stretch their roleplaying chops and the rest of the team doesn't want to kill them after the first job...) If perfect rigid equality for all were required, there would only be pre-set skill trees and cyberware or magic 'builds', with predetermined adventures set for specific difficulty levels based on the groups progress on their set scale of progression... which is simply not the case.
________________________________

To sum up this wall of text: Tabletop RPG's need some flexibility in their rule design so GM's and players can work together to come up with the best story based on what the GM wants to tell and the characters the players create. Because for published works there's a lot of moving parts, and sometimes things get missed or contradicted. This isn't a scam. Sometimes things get missed, and that's why forums like these exist, so when the 'hard problems' come up, we can all discuss it and come up with some BETTER answers together, along with the game designers themselves... who then put it in the errata.

Which is actually really nice, and gives us a reason to talk to each other. I only wish I had more time here so I wouldn't have to post walls of text in the moments I can actually contribute.

Crunch~

[DigitalZombie]

Well,
If I were to score Shadowrun 5 ed. It would be something like this.
These are naturally pretty subjective.

Setting 10/10. Shadowrun has the best world of all the RPGs I know of. I like the humour, the tone, the world and the setting.

Player options 8/10. Im a sucker for player options and shadowrun has a tonne of those. Although far from all of those a even close to usable thanks to their weird rules (drakes, AIs, ) and some are still of the table (free spirits, and CFD runners)
 The weird rules doesnt substract anything from the "character options" scores, but do have a negative impact on rules design and consistency.

Rules design 6/10. I like the basis of the rules design (attribute+skill +-modifiers) but the score is negatively impacted by odd counter-intuitive special cases. And also sometimes the rules are needlessly micromanaging- costs for clips, monthly costs for a goldfish in a bowl etc. Or just massive amounts of dicerolling- creating and using a fireball with enchanting for instance. Other times the rules have left out "normal" stuff that other RPGs usually includes like weight of equipment.

Rules consistency 3/10  this horrible low score includes lack of proofreading,  error riddled tables, but also inconsistent rules, and conflicting rules. Each table has to start their session 0 with deciding what dicepools riggers will be using. How many of the advanced magic rules will work, how addiction are working etc.

To use the terms weak/strong GM stuff. Shadowrun is a strong GM game not because of lack of rules, but because the rules are counter intuitive, or contradicting.

So to answer your question: I find the lack of consistency in rules as the single most damaging part of my gaming experience.

[Michael Chandra]

Honestly, it's starting to become obvious you're just hellbent on trashing the system and don't actually want help, you just want people to agree with you. And that's fine, but not in the Rules subforum. If you insist on lashing out, you should consider the possibilities that 1: you'll run out of people that try to help, and 2: this simply might not be the system for you, since it's obviously rubbing you the wrong way and you're fixating on its flaws.

And with that I'm bowing out. Good luck.

[Streetsam_Crunch]

Hey chummer, I was just responding to the original question "How much does the lack of consistency in rules affect your gameplay experience", and the answer is... it doesn't. As a GM, YOU create the consistency... or when I'm running the game, I do. When someone else is, they do, and I trust them to ensure the game is fun for everyone. Sometimes that doesn't happen for whatever reason. Bad rules, bad GM, or bad group dynamic. That answer depends on the experience. I've played games with crappy simple rules (think old Marvel FASERIP with the random character creation) and a good GM and player group, and had a blast exploring what could have been hopelessly bad characters. I've played games with good rules, a trusted friend as a GM and a bad group dynamic of characters (I've even played with the group of players before) and had it fall apart horribly because of character motivations. Again, decades of playing tabletop RPG's and I've seen many permutations.

Is that an excuse for 'bad game design' I don't know. If that's what it is, I've never found a totally perfect game system design, though I have found a number of ones I love. And those I will never play again.

2: this simply might not be the system for you, since it's obviously rubbing you the wrong way and you're fixating on its flaws.

And yet they care enough and think well enough of it that they come here to discuss it. Sorry if my answers didn't get you 'hot and bothered', Notion, but I gave you an honest answer. I honestly don't think that much about it. I am a fluid storyteller, and don't let myself get bogged down by the rules. I will argue for hours AFTER a game session is over if need be, but the first questions I ask myself when adjudicating any answer as a GM in the middle of a game is "What makes the most sense" and "Is this fun" (regardless of whether it is to the benefit of the players or not) because sometimes the consequences of failure can be just as interesting to the story. If the debate takes more than 10 minutes (or less if a player- I abide by a GM's rules and bring it up after) I just decide something and move on. I'm there to tell a story (either as a player of a GM) not argue over rules.

Though I will agree with Michael, telling someone their point is invalid because it doesn't align with how you see things, or calling it LAME! doesn't really 'turn others on' or win them to your point of view, either.

In the case of Noble Sacrifice (which has never come up in one of my games to date- for the record) for summoning spirits, I would apply a "you're doing this because you think you're going to die" effect, which means you're burning it to get ONE favor from a spirit, and it will do EVERYTHING in its power to enact it. You can't get multiple favors, or if you spend the points down the road, maybe IT would become your Spirit Ally because of the life you poured into it. The point of Noble Sacrifice is that you're potentially giving away EVERYTHING for it to happen. If you don't, and survive, thank the kindness of your GM for not accepting it, and taking it all. Again, for me, that's a completely story-driven power, regardless of what the text may or may not say... Looking to dip into that well again is kind of silly

"So, I was willing to give my life for that spirit to do this thing, and it still owes me..."

"Yeah, but it was a noble sacrifice... It responded because you put your heart into the request and it believed you were going to die..."

"And I lived, so, yeah, it owes me more favors now... and I'd LOVE a cup of coffee."

"..."

So can you explain me for any of the examples I mentioned above, how this is INTENTIONALLY done to leave stuff to the GM? Why would I want Stuff to be left to me as GM anyways? It's so much easier to ADJUST a working system by house rules as opposed to patching up the non-functional mess someone else produced.

First of all, if the system was perfect, you wouldn't need house rules.

That said, as a GM, it empowers me to tell the story I want, because there's contradiction for me to adjudicate that rules lawyers can't argue. If there is a hard rule, then the rules lawyers will fight from the point it is enacted until the cows come home to get what they want. The harder a rule is on the weird stuff, the easier it is to exploit.

I refuse to say if its bad design or intentionally vague on a case-to-case basis because I honestly don't know... I really don't, but it doesn't matter. (though Shadowrun even does this with the lore intentionally because misinformation is a big part of the lore and history of it- No. Seriously. History is written by the winners... or those left to tell the tale... or at least those willing to talk about it. As far back as 1st edition there was contradictory lore because the designers wanted the GM's to decide what was truth in their game, since it was all objective- doubt that and regardless of what you believe, look at the current real-world political climate and individual responses to it for your answers...) I know enough of the other rules, and the spirit of how things are written, to interpret them the way I do. If there wasn't enough there, I'd either abandon the system, or create my own and ignore it (which is not the same as saying- "If you don't like it, then leave" because I can only think we both believe there's enough good design here to have the debate about, or you wouldn't bother and actually create your own)

Yea, kinda. I am used to writing computer games, they have to be just as clear, y'know. Of course people can misunderstand things, but rules CAN be written in a way that makes the rules precise. Like each and every regular tabletop game does this, and most succeed.

Then try Battletech. They're written by Catalyst too, and believe me, they are so precise it hurts. Decades of beautiful, cold-blooded, precise design go into it. That's what its players are into. I have my old FASA stuff, and still love it, but I can't keep up with that kind of lifestyle as a game system (though I still enjoy it as an occasional past-time).

That said, I've also played SO MANY old-school text-based computer games... which turned out to be "guess what the game designer was thinking" exercises. Again, you never did answer me... have you ever given one of those simple clear systems to someone else to run and found out if it turned out different than you expected either because the GM or the players interpreted it differently?

To be fair, it's kind of a trick question, because if you haven't, it probably means you either have the best game system ever designed hidden in a folder somewhere, or you haven't exposed it to enough people yet.

Crunch~

[Streetsam_Crunch]

Na, I was really just curious how people feel about the flaws of the system, and i consider this a reasonable rules discussion on "Rules and such". I am not even trying to make people agree with me, I just would like to get sound reasons for why I would accept the flaws of the game, or much more, understand how others manage to do so.

Hehehe, looks like you answered while I was typing. Nah, not bashing you, though you were rather dismissive of some of my honest answers. Though I take no offense. You were willing to read it, and whether or not you agreed, that's something.

If you ask me, everyone who is into tabletop games love searching different systems. Whether its for the genre (which Shadowrun totally is for me) or the system (and I have my favorites there, too, warts and all- and yes, Shadowrun is one of them) so I don't fault you for asking about this one. Genre plays a big role, for sure, but going as far back as the first edition of the game, Shadowrun has always offered one thing many others didn't. The sheer scale of what a player can do in it, from 'black trench-coat' (hard-core cyberpunk-noir style) to 'pink-mohawk' (over-the-top 80's action movie style) games, it allowed for both. Heck, fans today still argue from time to time which variant of play is superior.

So, you're not just coming into here asking about a game system, you're talking to a number of folks who have enjoyed a game system that's been going on almost 30 years. With that comes a lot of understanding of previous systems and what people apply to that. Much like you writing a system and handing it to someone who has never seen it before, you are potentially (don't know your exposure to the Shadowrun genre) coming into a core that is decades in the making, so without that context may look at it and go "What??" And that's plausible. We may not see some of the same hurdles you do because of our understanding of previous iterations blinded us (and them) to this. In that context, you ask a good question.

I'm sorry if you see our answers a somehow hollow platitudes, but folks are giving the most honest answers they can. Most fans of this have been playing tabletop for decades, and have long put the story or game itself before rules. I first played "Chainmail" (early precursor to D&D) and have been playing RPG video games since Final Fantasy (I didn't have a computer until later in life) so I'll readily admit I have some bias in my perceptions about the imperfections of RPG systems (like the amount of time it takes to make a "Leading Edge" Aliens RPG character versus the amount of time it takes to kill one...) and games today.

That said, I do have to agree with Michael. If you really don't like the system, and are willing to dismiss the ones who do, what exactly do you really want out of this conversation?

Clarification on those rules? Because we're willing to discuss those, and how you may want to apply them. Though you seem to see any variance in consistency as a weakness in the system rather than a strength that enables GM's to tell their own stories. If that's the case, there may be a fundamental misunderstanding in how these ambiguities are perceived and discussed. That's fine, too, and if you want to party on your own, that's also cool... but many of us are just as happy to chat it out as long as you don't dismiss our perceptions of it out of hand.

Crunch~

[Reaver]

It's really tilting me, that everyone, except for DigitalZombie, is just here to dump his shallow thoughts on how "roleplaying games are meant to be played" as opposed to answering the question posed in the thread, lel. Is this how the Shadowrun community works? A HUUUUUUGE turnoff guys.

You get what you give.


And from the limited amount you have posted, you are not coming off as someone ANY ONE on the forum seems to wish to engage with other then the few who have..
might I suggest the problem lay with the poster?

[adzling]

So the problem here Notion is that both your premise (the rules are a shoddy mess that makes the game difficult to play) and that of many of your responders (the GM has to run the game so he can fix the drek) are both correct.

Which view you weight more will depend on your approach/ love for the game.

I've been playing srun since 1e and RPGs in general since 1980.

Shadowrun 5e is definitely full of crap, fragmented and poorly edited rules that barely hold together. It's full of stupid-silly exploits and rules that are terribly written and defined.

I've come to understand that this is a result of Catalyst's process, or rather lack of one.

There is no meaningful central rule authority and the freelancers (who write everything) vary wildly in talent/ skill. Some are good; many more are just crap at writing rules/ remembering key concepts.

This is why you end up with shoddy rules that contradict each other and can be hard to understand.

The process is basically pouring shovelfuls of barely readable "fluff" into books that have some poorly conceived rules/ crunch in alongside it.

If you love the setting then you put up with incompetence and fix what you can.

If you don't love the setting I can't imagine playing Shadowrun at all.

that's my 2 cents ;-)