[忍]

inb4 lock!!

CGL has a bad rep in regards to SR5. Lack of consistency, nonfunctional rules (looking at you powerblade), and no community involvement has made SR5, objectively, an unappealing mess of kludged together 'rules'. How has this affected my table? Well I have to make concessions and interpret the intent behind the crunch. This leans our games to feel home-brewed, but we still make due with the core skeleton of the system. Our collaborative story isn't hampered by this. If anything we have more freedom to tell a better story.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard a player ask, "How does that work?" For the sake of the game, I'd make a quick ruling and keep playing (instead of spending 10-30 mins looking it up). Of course later I would open up the books and hit the forums to shed some light on the matter. But for all the times the question has come up, we've managed to still have fun with our game. Sure its frustrating not to have clear-cut answers to odd questions (and even some not-so-odd ones). At the end of the day, I can only take what I'm given and go as far as I can.

[Finstersang]

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 ;-)

Couldn´t have said it better.

Yes, it kinda works, but you have to put in more effort as a GM and as a PC than other systems, including 4E, to simply figure stuff out and to fix the holes in the system. And this is not just because SR is intrinsically complex, it´s because the same mistakes are repeated over and over again withe every new supplement. And the root of all these design problems is an obvious lack of oversight.

Take the Matrix. 5 Years, two supplements, yet still some of the most basic questions about this part of the game (Noise and connectivity, closed systems, teamwork...), are unclear. Even in Kill Code, which I would consider one of the better supplements, I can´t help the feeling that I look at one of these "group projects" you do in high school or uni, where everyone does "their part" in secret and then it´s all thrown together in an incoherent and overblown powerpoint 5 Minutes before the final presentation. The individual effort put into the different parts is rarely the problem (and could be managed with some central quality control!); but in the end, the whole stuff just doesn´t fit together, because it isn´t fitted together. In the luckier cases, the individual parts are somewhat compatible by accident, but more than too often, they turn out redundant (why exactly do we have two modding systems for Riggers?), the powerlevel is way off, or the different pieces of fluff and crunch are contradicting themselfes.

And every most times this problem is brought up, the discussion either turns into an utter saltmine, or branches out into a heated discussion about some overspecified pet peeves (Exhibit A: Whatever that ally spirit catfight is about). The devil is rarely in the details in SR5. It´s in the big picture. If you look at this game as a huge piece of software, you realize that it is in serious need of some serious refactoring since multiple cycles.

[Reaver]

licenses held by one company, out sourced to another company.

Topps (the license holder) isn't in the RPG market, so they licensed SHadowrun out to a company that was interested in making it; FanPro.

FanPro went on to develop SR4, with a bunch of changes.... and went belly up.

In Media Res. (Catalyst) Came together by a few people with a love of the FASA properties and continued on.

Now, From what I can find out, Catalyst is a small company with under a dozen employees and relies on freelance writers (who are mostly fans, but with talent) to do the bulk of the work...

And from there, its all speculation and your guess is as good as anyone else.

[Reaver]

Is 4E worth trying? Like for someone who shares your opinion on rules inconsistency and such? Or is it just "slightly better, yet a bit dusty"?

4e... is the FIRST edition of a brand new set of rules, attributes and dice pools. As such it has its own glaring holes and problems.


The most "error free" version of the game is 3rd edition. But that is also almost 15 years old, discontinued, and had its own issues as well...

[Finstersang]

Is 4E worth trying? Like for someone who shares your opinion on rules inconsistency and such? Or is it just "slightly better, yet a bit dusty"?

The rules are a lot clearer and the fluff-crunch ratio is also a lot better.

There were some good general changes in 5th Edition, especially for Combat Situations - The new (old) Initiative System, Interrupt Actions, buffing melee, streamlined defense rolls, only one Attack per IP, nerfing direct Combat spells (they were ridicolous in 4th Edition)... It took me some time to see the flaws hidden behind the good stuff. F.i. Limits seemed like an interesting idea at first glance, but on a closer look, it´s an inherently unfun mechanic that adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the core gameplay mechanics and lured freelancers into handing out superfluous Limit modificators for your perks instead of "real" dice pool bonuses. And since it´s already too engrained in the system, you can´t just easily ignore it.

If you just take the core rules, the pros and cons of both Editions kinda cancel each other out, though. It´s the supplements where the flaws of Catalysts "design concept" really start to show. 4th Editions supplements were crunchy af, and they didn´t hold back the most interesting bits to milk the players with a second supplement (Catalyst is just greedy here, as much as I can understand it from a business perspective). Most important, the new crunch only added a managable amount of complexity and wordsalad while still generating more playable options (both for players and GMS) than 5E does.

To give an example: In 5E, you get a new bunch of Combat spells in every other supplement. Most are just tweaked versions of the existing spells, some are incredibly useless niche spells and some are blatantly overpowered in comparison to the rest. Asides from the last category, these spells add hardly anything new, but they manage to rack up the word count. At least higher than in 4E, because in 4E, there was a toolbox to craft your own combat spells. I´m not joking here: You combined a bunch of properties (direct/indirect, AOE etc.) and elemental/secondary effects (including stuff like sonic, sand, ice or metal splinters), calculated a drain code and boom: With the GM´s approval, you had a new spell at your hand. Burning Sand Bomb? Check. Metal Splinter Fist? Check. Wall of Sound? Check. And the whole thing fitted on 2 pages. Unthinkable in 5E. Why add hundreds of possible different spells on two pages when you can bolster up 20+ pages with a hand-picked fraction of them? It´s a mass-over-class mentality that pays here.

So why does nobody start refactoring? Other people said, there's a very active community and such. I dont mean to sound sarcastic, I just try to make sense of the different things people say in here.

Because it pays better to ignore it and add more semi-coherent supplements to the pile, which will be bought by the remaining players that are still hooked enough to scrape the tiny bits of usable crunch out of every new book. Also, if you start to fix a problem, you have to acknowledge it was there in the first place 

There´s an Errata team on it, but as far as I understood they are all(?) unpaid volunteers and they still seem to have trouble to get the right "blessings" for the more impactfull (read: actually important) clarifications. Also, the more you add to a wonky system, the wonkier it gets. And a lot was added since 5E came out, with minimal official Errata in the same time.

Last but not least: The Errata team also gets a lot of undeserved salt thrown at them, either because they are mistaken for the culprits of the game´s current ills or because some people (I might be not that innocent here as well  ) sperg out over miniscule Errata decisions that goes against their personal preferences. That´s not a great motiviator, especially for volunteers. With that being said: Nothing but respect for you people 

[Reaver]

Is 4E worth trying? Like for someone who shares your opinion on rules inconsistency and such? Or is it just "slightly better, yet a bit dusty"?

The rules are a lot clearer and the fluff-crunch ratio is also a lot better.

There were some good general changes in 5th Edition, especially for Combat Situations - The new (old) Initiative System, Interrupt Actions, buffing melee, streamlined defense rolls, only one Attack per IP, nerfing direct Combat spells (they were ridicolous in 4th Edition)... It took me some time to see the flaws hidden behind the good stuff. F.i. Limits seemed like an interesting idea at first glance, but on a closer look, it´s an inherently unfun mechanic that adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the core gameplay mechanics and lured freelancers into handing out superfluous Limit modificators for your perks instead of "real" dice pool bonuses.

If you just take the core rules, the pros and cons of both Editions kinda cancel each other out, though. It´s the supplements where the flaws of Catalysts "design concept" really start to show. 4th Editions supplements were crunchy af, and they didn´t hold back the most interesting bits to milk the players with a second supplement (Catalyst is just greedy here, as much as I can understand it from a business perspective). Most important, the new crunch only added a managable amount of complexity and wordsalad while still generating more playable options (both for players and GMS) than 5E does.

To give an example: In 5E, you get a new bunch of Combat spells in every other supplement. Most are just tweaked versions of the existing spells, some are incredibly useless niche spells and some are blatantly overpowered in comparison to the rest. Asides from the last category, these spells add hardly anything new, but they manage to rack up the word count. At least higher than in 4E, because in 4E, there was a toolbox to craft your own combat spells. I´m not joking here: You combined a bunch of properties (direct/indirect, AOE etc.) and elemental/secondary effects (including stuff like sonic, sand, ice or metal splinters), calculated a drain code and boom: With the GM´s approval, you had a new spell at your hand. Burning Sand Bomb? Check. Metal Splinter Fist? Check. Wall of Sound? Check. And the whole thing fitted on 2 pages. Unthinkable in 5E. Why add hundreds of possible different spells on two pages when you can bolster up 20+ pages with a hand-picked fraction of them? It´s a mass-over-class mentality that pays here.

So why does nobody start refactoring? Other people said, there's a very active community and such. I dont mean to sound sarcastic, I just try to make sense of the different things people say in here.

Because it pays better to ignore it and add more incoherent supplements to the pile, which will be bought by players that are still hooked enough to scrape the tiny bits of usable crunch out of every new book. Also, if you start to fix a problem, you have to acknowledge it was there in the first place 

There´s an Errata team on it, but as far as I understood they are all(?) unpaid volunteers and they still seem to have trouble to get the right "blessings" for the more impactfull (read: actually important) clarifications. Also, the more you add to a wonky system, the wonkier it gets. And a lot was added since 5E came out, with minimal official Errata in the same time.

Last but not least: The Errata team also gets a lot of undeserved salt thrown at them, either because they are mistaken for the culprits of the game´s current ills or because some people (I might be not that innocent here as well  ) sperg out over miniscule Errata decisions that goes against their personal preferences. That´s not a great motiviator, especially for volunteers. With that being said: Nothing but respect for you people 

Doesn't help either when you are essentially cleaning up someone else's mess, with no direction, in the first place.
 (Catalyst inherited a lot of the mess to begin with)

[adzling]

awesome post Finster and perfectly on the money imho (and im on the errata team!).

my only disagreement is limits, I actually like them and find them useful ;-)

Is 4E worth trying? Like for someone who shares your opinion on rules inconsistency and such? Or is it just "slightly better, yet a bit dusty"?

The rules are a lot clearer and the fluff-crunch ratio is also a lot better.

There were some good general changes in 5th Edition, especially for Combat Situations - The new (old) Initiative System, Interrupt Actions, buffing melee, streamlined defense rolls, only one Attack per IP, nerfing direct Combat spells (they were ridicolous in 4th Edition)... It took me some time to see the flaws hidden behind the good stuff. F.i. Limits seemed like an interesting idea at first glance, but on a closer look, it´s an inherently unfun mechanic that adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to the core gameplay mechanics and lured freelancers into handing out superfluous Limit modificators for your perks instead of "real" dice pool bonuses. And since it´s already too engrained in the system, you can´t just easily ignore it.

If you just take the core rules, the pros and cons of both Editions kinda cancel each other out, though. It´s the supplements where the flaws of Catalysts "design concept" really start to show. 4th Editions supplements were crunchy af, and they didn´t hold back the most interesting bits to milk the players with a second supplement (Catalyst is just greedy here, as much as I can understand it from a business perspective). Most important, the new crunch only added a managable amount of complexity and wordsalad while still generating more playable options (both for players and GMS) than 5E does.

To give an example: In 5E, you get a new bunch of Combat spells in every other supplement. Most are just tweaked versions of the existing spells, some are incredibly useless niche spells and some are blatantly overpowered in comparison to the rest. Asides from the last category, these spells add hardly anything new, but they manage to rack up the word count. At least higher than in 4E, because in 4E, there was a toolbox to craft your own combat spells. I´m not joking here: You combined a bunch of properties (direct/indirect, AOE etc.) and elemental/secondary effects (including stuff like sonic, sand, ice or metal splinters), calculated a drain code and boom: With the GM´s approval, you had a new spell at your hand. Burning Sand Bomb? Check. Metal Splinter Fist? Check. Wall of Sound? Check. And the whole thing fitted on 2 pages. Unthinkable in 5E. Why add hundreds of possible different spells on two pages when you can bolster up 20+ pages with a hand-picked fraction of them? It´s a mass-over-class mentality that pays here.

So why does nobody start refactoring? Other people said, there's a very active community and such. I dont mean to sound sarcastic, I just try to make sense of the different things people say in here.

Because it pays better to ignore it and add more semi-coherent supplements to the pile, which will be bought by the remaining players that are still hooked enough to scrape the tiny bits of usable crunch out of every new book. Also, if you start to fix a problem, you have to acknowledge it was there in the first place 

There´s an Errata team on it, but as far as I understood they are all(?) unpaid volunteers and they still seem to have trouble to get the right "blessings" for the more impactfull (read: actually important) clarifications. Also, the more you add to a wonky system, the wonkier it gets. And a lot was added since 5E came out, with minimal official Errata in the same time.

Last but not least: The Errata team also gets a lot of undeserved salt thrown at them, either because they are mistaken for the culprits of the game´s current ills or because some people (I might be not that innocent here as well  ) sperg out over miniscule Errata decisions that goes against their personal preferences. That´s not a great motiviator, especially for volunteers. With that being said: Nothing but respect for you people 

[忍]

Yea, alright, makes kinda sense. I dont want to judge too harshly, but tbh, I've seen freelancers and/or hobbyists producing content of way higher quality for Systems, which have way less actual customers, some of them are even only present on national markets. - I do not know, how much enthusiasm and game design skills I am allowed to expect from Fan-Freelancers, but I would love to see an improvement in quality, which seems to be possible, looking at some other companies under the same conditions, as mentioned.

Care to list some examples?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Because I, like adzling, have been playing since 1e, and have been a rabid fan through 3e (had other things take my attention during much of 4e, but I do try to keep up), I have very, very little issue with any real or perceived lack of consistency in the rules -- in part because I already know what is intended, generally if not specifically, when I'm running my game.  While SunRunner is more up-to-date on the current rules, and practically everyone around the table has a computer with PDF copies of pretty much every 5e PDF in the game -- as well as Chummer5 and/or HeroLab, from which to retrieve the source for a piece of gear, spell, etc. -- as GM, I know the heart of the matter: what the rules are meant to be doing, as compared to what they are apparently trying to do.  So a tweak, or a GM's call, is all that's necessary.  Presuming it's necessary at all.

Yes, SR5 is being developed, playtested, and edited primarily by volunteers.  Compare that with, say, Paizo, which has well over Catalyst's staff of 6-8, or Wizards of the Coast, which at the time of this writing has four or more times as many job openings as Catalyst has full-time staff.  You might say that 'fan-based' does great things, and yes, fan-based can and does.  And no, this isn't entirely the case for Catalyst, but I can and will say that striving to be consistent within the game and of professional quality is something that every volunteer for Catalyst works towards.  We don't always hit the mark, but we do try - in the midst of all the other stuff we're working on, like kids and getting through life.  Sure, it'd be different if this was our full-time job, but ...

So sure, you can complain.  We'll nod, and keep doing what we're doing, and -- honestly, at least on my part -- mostly ignore you, because it's hard enough inventing this stuff and putting it together with a modicum of professionality and, generally, without feedback at the starting stages, to also let someone in your imaginary office to stand next to your desk and scream abuse in your ear every couple of minutes.

Critique, sure.  Offer up FAQ questions.  Point out basic editing mistakes.  Suggest Errata.  We'll pay attention to that.

Bitching, though ... not so much.

[忍]

[Michael Chandra]

[DigitalZombie]

Slightly related to the original post.
I would looove to see a general survey of the percieved strengths and weaknesses of shadowrun 5ed. Maybe a nice little survey monkey posted on these forums. 
As I think that this thread doesnt really manage to bring the issues out in the light- partly because the OPs subjective stance on the subject brought a lot of people on the defence, and thus causing their responses to be coloured by OPs method of communicating.

[PiXeL01]

I’m not sure whether I talked  about the situation at my table. Basically I’m the only person having a relatively firm grasp of the rules, so I’m consulated constantly, which is understandable since we only play about once a month.
However, if I cannot provide an confident answer or find it within a minute I’ll wing it and then come back with an answer when we communicate on messenger services after the game and we’ll hopefully remember the next session.

Rule consistency or even rules in general is not as important at my table as the story, flow, and company. I do try to familiarize myself with all rules relevant to all characters in the group and poke the GM for which sections that might be in use next session.

Settings > rules for me.

[Marcus]

So a concept that interests me sophisticated system, complex systems, sophisticated and complex systems.
So 5th is a sophisticated system, where 4th was a complex system, 3rd was both Sophisticated and Complex a fact that always surprises me when i got back and re-read it. (It takes me 5 mins to with core book to remember how damage codes worked in 3rd or the madness of variable target numbers, where 6 and 7 are the same number). Anyways I think 5th like 4th before it will be improved a great deal with its core book getting the collective errata and creep integrated into it, with a little re-polish. 

5th has the greater simplicity of mechanics introduced in 4th, with the edition of limits to stamp down where 4th got to over the top regularly, and of course bring deckers back.

Edit Ooops! I did mean 5th.

[PiXeL01]

Wait, 6th? Have I been hibernating? Has that been announced?