[Michael Chandra]

I'm going to use the digital beginner box and print stuff to host a game two weeks at monthly rpg night. Probably will tweak a few things if I feel a rule is too far off what we know the real thing will be like. From what I gather from the twitter thing the cards are excellent. But then again if they ever released that for the full game people would call it a money grab just like there already are complaints about Edge counters.

I hope the Rigger file drops in two weeks.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Might be a money grab doesn’t make it less useful. I love the D&d spell cards it speeds up play. Counters are a bit silly because pennies would work fine. I can’t think of a easy method to do spell cards.

[Marcus]

I don’t have any issue with money grabs. It’s a business and it’s good for everyone if they make money. It’s not like anyone is forced to buy these things. I just wish the  QSR was accurate to the CRB. The confusion the QSR is going to cause in the long run is going to come back to haunt 6e and it may not take long at all for its effects to be felt.

[jim1701]

I don’t have any issue with money grabs. It’s a business and it’s good for everyone if they make money. It’s not like anyone is forced to buy these things. I just wish the  QSR was accurate to the CRB. The confusion the QSR is going to cause in the long run is going to come back to haunt 6e and it may not take long at all for its effects to be felt.

Ding, ding, ding.  We have a winner.  Wait, we'll all be losers if this is actually CGL's plan.  Using a subset of the full rules as the QSR is a good idea.  Using different rules for the QSR from the full game is idiotic. 

[Eric da MAJ]

Pluses, Minuses and Questions follow.

+ A lot of over complicated stuff got drek canned and simpler things replaced them.  GM fiat and common sense - especially experienced Shadowrun GMs - can paper over the gaps.   This is applied to combat, magic, and hacking.

+ Movement is carefully defined and easily calculated.  I think the mechanics can use a bit of refinement but there's no heavy math or going through multiple books/chapters.

+ It's very likely once players understand the rules gameplay can be as fluid - in some ways more fluid - than Anarchy.

+ Art.  The art is pretty solid and runs with between gritty and darkly glamorous but not silly or off putting.

+ Build quality.  You can argue the money could've been better spent, but it is a handsomely printed game.

+ Edge.  The way they did it is pretty creative and may make for a rather interesting game.

- Editing.  It's not horrible, but after years of it being lousy, I'm over sensitive.  The fireball card is pretty screwed up as someone pointed out to me.

- Writing style.  I launched a discrete campaign to have the rules written in a business writing style with active verbs and more direct sentence structure.  It didn't happen.  That's not a total disaster for the box set.  They will pay for it if they don't apply it to the full book.

- Initiative system.  This is a subjective point, but I liked re-rolling initiative every combat turn.  As it is, you're stuck with whatever you roll for every turn until the combat ends.

- Crunch Depravation.  Yes, that seemingly completely contradicts the first "+".   But I think CGL and even some of the fan base mis understand the crunch thing a bit.  Yes, the rules could be absurdly hard at times.  But the biggest factor wasn't that the rules were hard even at their worst.  It's that they were often poorly written and contradictory with elements scattered to hell and back so much they were hard to track without a photographic memory.   Sometimes even the simple rules were so poorly written they couldn't be easily understood.  Even a desktop computer and searchable .pdfs isn't always enough to get by.   The new rules streamline a lot, but I think they're going to lose people that like the crunch.

- Combat defense is a little fuzzy as well as figuring out how to stack the mooks so they get bonuses to attacks based on their numbers.

??  A lot of the gear and abilities are simplified to be calculated as part of the new Edge system.  For the box set, that's plenty OK.  But part of Shadowrun's charm is the scalability of all the gear, weapons, etc.  With Edge limited to 7, that doesn't seem like they're gonna be able to do that.

[Michael Chandra]

As for Crunch: QSR have always heavily oversimplified parts of the rules. Narrow bursts vs wide bursts comes to mind as a past example that got stripped out of QSRs. And we already have examples of spells being simpler in QSR than we expect them to be in Core.

I am curious about the final rules with gear and abilities. We'll see whether people go for easier Edge or just a bit more of X or Y, hopefully. No more 'always Alpha' I hope.

It does suck a lot that some of the cards appear wrong. They're supposed to be a reliable strength point of the Box to me, so mistakes in them suck.

Artwise: iirc there is a Sprawl Ops backer in there. Once I get home this weekend I should remember to check my cards to identify them.

[Hephaestus]

The oversimplification worries me about the Beginner Box. I understand simplifying the rules for a starter box, but how far off are we talking from what the actual cores rules are vs. the QSRs?

[Michael Chandra]

If you want a rough idea, check the SR5 QSR and compare to SR5 rules. Basically oversimplified and a few inaccurate shortcuts.

[PMárk]

Ok, I've seen some talk on reddit about armor not doing much and that STR does not add to close combat and that it's based on the actual play, when they're using the corebook. I know it might be old news, but I didn1t have time to follow all the news, tidbits and discussions during the past month (or at all, really), so what's this? I thought the declared intention was to make the game easier to play, but to keep the crunchy aspect.

I so much don't need another VtM 5e "experience" from Shadowrun too... Please tell me this won't be some over-simplified, narrative-type divergence, jsut a tad beefier than Anarchy!

[Michael Chandra]

Would it matter if I told you? Others would argue the other way and in the end we end up with polarised positions and ad homini while we haven't even played the game yet. Not to mention people already caught several mistakes in the Actual Play so they're not scripture.

With 50 pages of gear and my street sams never depending on Strength for damage anyway (hello electric attacks!), with an unknown amount of Status Effects added, with the shift in the bonuses due to the Edge system, the meta changes and crunch evolves, but it doesn't sound Anarchy.

[adzling]

You're not wrong.

Ok, I've seen some talk on reddit about armor not doing much and that STR does not add to close combat and that it's based on the actual play, when they're using the corebook. I know it might be old news, but I didn1t have time to follow all the news, tidbits and discussions during the past month (or at all, really), so what's this? I thought the declared intention was to make the game easier to play, but to keep the crunchy aspect.

I so much don't need another VtM 5e "experience" from Shadowrun too... Please tell me this won't be some over-simplified, narrative-type divergence, jsut a tad beefier than Anarchy!

[PMárk]

You're not wrong.

Ok, I've seen some talk on reddit about armor not doing much and that STR does not add to close combat and that it's based on the actual play, when they're using the corebook. I know it might be old news, but I didn1t have time to follow all the news, tidbits and discussions during the past month (or at all, really), so what's this? I thought the declared intention was to make the game easier to play, but to keep the crunchy aspect.

I so much don't need another VtM 5e "experience" from Shadowrun too... Please tell me this won't be some over-simplified, narrative-type divergence, jsut a tad beefier than Anarchy!

That's highly unfortunate.

One thing I loved very much in the old WoD system and in SR is  the how agility/dex and str worked in combat. The interaplay between accuracy ang hitting power and how you have to have both for close combat. I get it isn't the most "streamlined" mechanic (though it's not rocket science either), but I liked it, precisely because it was a deeper, more "realistic" approach than many other games used with the simplistic ranged-dex/cc-str dichotomy. I missed that in NWoD and now in V5 too,as both switched to the later and I see it as inferior.

Armor, on the other hand, I absolutely hated how badly V5 treated it, which made absolutely zero sense. If it will become badly implemented in SR6 too, I'm not happy about it.

Overall, I'll read the book, but I'd hate if I'll have to scribe another notch on the "new edition of a game I loved, which just doesn't work for me" table. It got to be a pretty long list in the past few years, sadly. If they botch SR/ too and PF2... I just don't know, maybe the trends and directions in the RPG industry is heading now just aren't for my tastes, in general. I wish I wouldn't feel like an old grognard, at age 30, who have frozen in time with the editions of his youth, but damn, there's fewer and fewer games out there, which I actually like, both new editions of old games and totaly new ones. Some of them are not even new, really, just new on the international market.

[adzling]

Our table is sticking with 5e.

With the minor tweaks we have made for playability and balance it mostly works for us.

6e makes no sense from a mechanical or IRL perspective, but I guess that's no surprise given Catalyst's horrific track record with the franchise.

[PMárk]

Oh and I see Essence loss aren't losing your humanity any more and doesn't come with social repercussions...

Well, that's another interesting and good concept the game had going the way of the dodo, I guess. Because reasons (I could guess, but it'd sound ugly).

[adzling]

If you value realistic interactions with meaningful outcomes then 6e is not for you.

If you like highly abstracted, nonsensical games that value cool over realism and simplicity over crunch then you should love 6e.

Movie wise think Bladerunner vs. Men in Black.

6e is effectively MiB.