[Marcus]

I don't think removing armor from soak was done in the name of simplification.

It's pretty clear (not that I know for sure, I wasn't part of playtest) that the size of the soak pools being made smaller was necessary because there was a strategic design goal made that weapons will have smaller DV values.  You can't be rolling 5e size soak pools against the DVs in 6e.

Yes but the weapons damage change was simplification (We know this b/c melee weapons suddenly don't do what they used to), so armor there for armor is changes are also based upon a change for simplification as well.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I don't think removing armor from soak was done in the name of simplification.

It's pretty clear (not that I know for sure, I wasn't part of playtest) that the size of the soak pools being made smaller was necessary because there was a strategic design goal made that weapons will have smaller DV values.  You can't be rolling 5e size soak pools against the DVs in 6e.

Yes but the weapons damage change was simplification (We know this b/c melee weapons suddenly don't do what they used to), so armor there for armor is changes are also based upon a change for simplification as well.

While its possible that is part of their motivation, I just can't see how they would think that strength helping unarmed but not melee damage is easier. As that seems more complicated to me at least. Easy is using the same rules across the board.

My guess is once they committed to no soak from armor they were forced into a box with max damage for melee damage.  The range is probably the same as other editions 1-5 just not +strength, if they added strength the damage would be out of the scale for what just body can deal with.  Even 1/2 strength would put trolls well past assault cannons, heavy machine guns etc in damage, maybe even rocket launchers etc.  And that is non augmented trolls, just strong ones.  If they had thought for one second that agility doesn't have to handle every physical thing in the universe and actually makes less sense for close combat skills and put strength as the linked attribute it actually would have worked. Set unarmed damage at 1 stun, skeletons at 1,2,3 physical, knives 1, hatchets 2, swords 3, big swords 4, combat axe 5. Sticking with agility as the linked stat was a epic fail. I don't have words to describe how poorly thought out it was.

[Marcus]

As to Unarmed i guess there are some cows so sacred they just have to be left alone?
But I for one look forward to seeing max body min str trolls running around.
Every version of SR has had issues. I agree that I think 6e looks like it's gonna lots of work.
But lets be honest drone swarms are still basically legal in 5e.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Something I saw over in a FB group, which adds a fresh perspective on the discussions had here:

A review of the 6e QSR.

[Shinobi Killfist]

As to Unarmed i guess there are some cows so sacred they just have to be left alone?
But I for one look forward to seeing max body min str trolls running around.
Every version of SR has had issues. I agree that I think 6e looks like it's gonna lots of work.
But lets be honest drone swarms are still basically legal in 5e.

Yeah. I guess I prefer when my issues are more a ask the players not to break the game style instead of the core rules impacting the feel of the setting in a negative way.

[Michael Chandra]

Something I saw over in a FB group, which adds a fresh perspective on the discussions had here:

A review of the 6e QSR.

A nice short review. It doesn't address the mistakes on some cards, or the likely-significantly-different-in-core for some mechanics, but it judges it fairly on what it's doing.

[PMárk]

Looks like the powers that be are getting leaned on concerning 6e.

I suspect what we are seeing on 6e is the result of a couple trends in the industry. The first is the 5e D&D thing, like it or dislike it D&D is still the 500lb gorilla of ttrpgs. 5e D&D has become hugely popular, if you keep an eye on trend across game support sites, you will notice the huge majority have become over run with many home brew 5e variants. If you watch things like drivethrurpg you will see some their all time best sellers have become Dmguild products. 5e’s most visible change is simplification. Simplified everything. Certainly 6e simplification trend is probably related to that. Another trend we are seeing is momentum, i first recall it from ether exalted or Scion recent editions. But I believe is several other IPs. Momentum makes thing more interesting as you build up as a result of failure, yours or your parties. I think the new edge incarnation may relate to that. Now I easily be wrong on that score, momentum and edge are generated in very different ways and do very different things. I thought edge might be like proficiency bonus at first but as it doesn’t scale and it’s not really additive I think I was wrong there. 

That’s my theory on how we got here. I have no reasonable explanation on the QSR thing.

I think you're on the right track with these thoughts. Certainly, I've seeing a lot of the same with many games.

Trouble is, for me, I don't like simplification, after a certain point. I want mechanical depth and simulation in games, to an extent. As for the momentum-like stuff, I get it, but it's just too "gamist" for my tastes. It just breaks my suspension of disbelief and desire for an internaly consistent world, which I want for my immersion in it.

I guess, as long as the winds don't change I the industry, I can't expect many games with systems I actually like.

It'd be interesting to see, if this will lead to something, in time, like the OSR renaissance, where people would want to go back to the classic-style "simulationist" games, but with improved and polished math and cutting out the chaff.

[adzling]

Yeah i'm with you PMark, I like my games crunchy.

Crunch can work with simplification if you carefully consider mechanics and internal consistency and logic.

imho 6e is an unfortunate overreaction to 5e's flaws that has resulted in the baby being thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak.

I suspect the dev process got hijacked by someone burning their hand on 5e development and the crap-show that was 5e's matrix and rigger subsystems that only got worse as more crap was bolted on over time without any clear design goals or purpose.

They should have kicked off 6e's dev process with a huge mea culpa and reach out to the player community to find out what they liked, didn't like and what worked and didn't work.

Instead they worked in secret with minimal outside input. Looking at what resulted it's clear there was an echo chamber of self-reinforcing feedback that cut 6e off from what shadowrun has traditionally been.

And now we have armor that doesn't stop bullets any better than a bikini, melee attack that don't factor in strength at all, etc.

So much opportunity lost here to really transform srun into something awesome.

Just sad all round really.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Yeah. Maybe coordinating. 250,000 person playtest like path finder was beyond their scope. But a secret tiny one was just a terrible idea.

[Rift_0f_Bladz]

Yeah, well it looks like for me another system I love, Pathfinder, is also going with over simplified system, aka PF2. I looked at the playtest and out side of a few minor parts, thought it was crap. Now, SR6 looks liked it jumped on the D&D 5th Ed style, but over simplified as well. Well, that might be two systems I won't be updating with. Luckily, I do like Starfinder.

SR5 is not perfect, but has a lot of things I like and apparently work better than versions in the past, Matrix, Riggers, and Technos not included. Personally, don't mind limits and acc as ways of controlling the crazy dice pools. The high DVs are for the most part countered by the high soak pools. Basic combat is decent, could be better, could also be a lot worse. My real complaint was like of constant feed back and errata for all the errors. Some of those errors should have never happened or at least should have been quickly addressed and had the fixes made easily available.

[Marcus]

They should have kicked off 6e's dev process with a huge mea culpa and reach out to the player community to find out what they liked, didn't like and what worked and didn't work.

Instead they worked in secret with minimal outside input. Looking at what resulted it's clear there was an echo chamber of self-reinforcing feedback that cut 6e off from what shadowrun has traditionally been.

Mea Culpa or not, the blame game while nice, doesn't really matter. We all want a better system, and there is no doubt that broad play testing, with input from community at large is a good way of to get a functional system.  That said I totally agree with you Adzling.

On Starfinder i think it's  very close to being a good game, their version of bounded accuracy is to tight, building on the assumption of max possible verses the assumption of average character results in required constant min/maxing, which I dislike. I have looked at the PF2 play test and I think they are moving in the right direction time will tell.

[Michael Chandra]

Well once we reach December and I've been able to host a few open events with it and convinced some people to join a 2-season campaign, I'll let y'all know what their thoughts on the system are. I know my wife, if I manage to convince her, will love it (the Rigger disasters turned her off Shadowrun entirely, and SR6 is already not making the #1 Rigger mistake of SR5). I also hope she'll enjoy the Matrix, because as a Decker she just went through the motions most of the time. And the Techno players quickly moved on to other characters. So I can't wait to see how those turn out.

[Singularity]

...(the Rigger disasters turned her off Shadowrun entirely, and SR6 is already not making the #1 Rigger mistake of SR5)...

Out of curiosity, especially since I am looking at a rigger/hacker for 6th edition, what was that mistake made by 5th edition?

[Michael Chandra]

Contradictions between a few places in the rules that made it impossible to know 100% certain what RAW was for 'Gunnery + X when jumped in or in VR? Agility or Logic?' This in part due to the way Control Device described things, which RAI appeared to be for AR-only but RAW simply was for all Control Device stuff.

As for SR6: Beginner Box literally says "combined with Logic (the jumped-in replacement for Agility" so it appears for jumped-in riggers it's extremely clear how it works now. Praise Saeletra!

Now we'll just have to see how it works for remote control, but at the very least a jumped-in-focus rigger combines with hacking.

[Marcus]

Out of curiosity, especially since I am looking at a rigger/hacker for 6th edition, what was that mistake made by 5th edition?

There were several major rigger issues in 5e, the skill thing was kinda whatever, most tables just picked one and stuck with it. But the more significant issues, were drones were delicate in 5e (IE with one or two exceptions, there were very easy to kill.) and to make that worse that repair rules were terrible, and very poorly defined. It was effectively cheaper to buy a new drone then repair a broken one for most of the 5e.

Then for driver riggers, the collision rules in 5e were stupidly deadly and made no sense. In 5e your pilot took damage based upon the body of their vehicle. The famous example is a truck driver that struck head on with a motor scooter. The truck driver basically died horribly while the motor scooter driver, would walk away virtually unharmed.
 
So yeah 5e was not good for riggers.