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From:	jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Sun, 24 Jul 2005 14:40:24 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 1 --- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:

> Not completely, but you will have to adjust plenty
> of things. A street
> sam with wired-2 will still be a street sam with
> wired-2, although the
> game rules may change; for riggers etc. IMHO you'd
> be better off
> starting from scratch instead of trying to convert
> an old character, though.

Said street sam might therefore be "worth more" (or
less) on the streets due to the positive/negative
effects of the SOTA. This is where a fair conversion
system would come in, one which would preferably take
into account the years that will have passed since the
2nd crash event, during which a character will
naturally have changed along with any new
developments.

I'm assuming that SR4's characters will be more
capable (or at least versatile) in technological terms
(i.e.: starting characters will be able to adopt a
number new&exciting technologies). If this is true,
the SR3-to-SR4 conversions should leave a PC with some
credit to spend on stuff. This incidentally provides
GM's with a wonderful treat to dangle in front of
reticient PC's: adopt the new ruleset, get free
goodies.

The reverse might be true as well, though: SR3 PC's
might end up with "lost technology" thereby making
them somewhat more valuable than comparable
SR4-generated PC's. While this sounds "cool" (i.e.:
advantageous to anyone currently playing SR3 and
intending to adopt SR4), I can't help but anticipate
munchkins who would then generate a PC in SR3 just to
run it through the conversion.

cheers,

Jan Jaap

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From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:03:51 +0200

Message no. 2 According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 24-7-05 23:40 the word on the
street was...

> Said street sam might therefore be "worth more" (or
> less) on the streets due to the positive/negative
> effects of the SOTA. This is where a fair conversion
> system would come in, one which would preferably take
> into account the years that will have passed since the
> 2nd crash event, during which a character will
> naturally have changed along with any new
> developments.

Ehh... how so? For the characters in the game world, nothing would
change -- pre-Crash wired 2 = post-Crash wired 2. For us players, we
might see a difference because of changes in the game rules, but to the
characters things would be the same as always. With riggers, if
pre-Crash they need VCRs etc. but post-Crash they need completely
different hardware, there would be an IC change, though.

> I'm assuming that SR4's characters will be more
> capable (or at least versatile) in technological terms
> (i.e.: starting characters will be able to adopt a
> number new&exciting technologies).

Yes :)

> If this is true,
> the SR3-to-SR4 conversions should leave a PC with some
> credit to spend on stuff. This incidentally provides
> GM's with a wonderful treat to dangle in front of
> reticient PC's: adopt the new ruleset, get free
> goodies.

There, too, I don't follow your logic. Say you make an SR3 character
with, say, 400,000 nuyen. You then convert him to SR4 and do the math to
discover that his gear would now cost only, for example, 275,000¥. Do
you propose giving this character 125,000¥ to spend just because prives
changed? If that's the case, maybe you could get Dixons to give me a
voucher for, oh, �400 because I bought a 2,500-guilder digital camera in
2001, but its current equivalents only cost about �700...

> The reverse might be true as well, though: SR3 PC's
> might end up with "lost technology" thereby making
> them somewhat more valuable than comparable
> SR4-generated PC's. While this sounds "cool" (i.e.:
> advantageous to anyone currently playing SR3 and
> intending to adopt SR4), I can't help but anticipate
> munchkins who would then generate a PC in SR3 just to
> run it through the conversion.

All that requires is the GM to say "Did this character exist in our old
campaign? No, I didn't think so either... Make him/her with SR4, or
don't play at all."

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 03:30:12 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 3 --- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:

> According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 24-7-05
> 23:40 the word on the
> street was...
>

[pre-crash = post-crash stuff]

I'm claiming that a fair conversion system would have
to allow "Sammy X" to be just as good on the streets
in 2070 as he would've been in 2065. Otherwise people
might just throw away their old characters, unless
they like a roleplaying challenge.

[If what I say is right, Dixons must give Gurth money
so he can keep up with the SOTA]

When converting an SR3 character to SR4 the 5 years
that pass between the "end" of SR3 and where SR4 picks
up have to be taken into account. The character would
not sit still in that time and it is unlikely a
zero-sum would result from its activities; the PC is
likely to at least try to keep up with the SOTA.

> All that requires is the GM to say "Did this
> character exist in our old
> campaign? No, I didn't think so either... Make
> him/her with SR4, or
> don't play at all."

If conversion rules were to be official, or are
adopted as a house rule by the GM this might still be
an issue. I do agree that a dash of common sense would
resolve any problems here. However, someone might
claim to be making an SR3 character that is to be run
through a conversion system for roleplaying reasons. A
good conversion system should not leave that character
any better or worse off for having gone through it.

Perhaps SR3 and SR4 are just mutually unintelligible
game systems, though... in which case we have to face
the ugly question of whether the developers haven't
strayed too far from the original.

I for one couldn't really care less in practical terms
(not in a gaming group ATM), but for the sake of
argument I would like to see someone come up with a
decent way to convert SR3 stats to SR4 to prove that
SR3 and SR4 are still vaguely related games.

This incidentally leads me onto another peeve of mine
that had only dimly sat in my mind previously, but
returned to the forefront as I was sorting through my
SR collection. All the location and sourcebooks
released so far have in fact been SR3-based. System
Failure will effectively nullify their validity and
provide plenty of work for SR authors as they'll have
to update old material to conform to new developments.
Conclusion: I end up spending yet more money to keep
up with the SR world without seeing any more depth to
its development (except, perhaps, by observing how it
has changed). Opinion: This Is Bad.

Solution: Start playing again, flesh things out
yourself. Answer: No time, just want books that
conform to current sense of quality.

Where gameplay is concerned, consider that all the
location sourcebooks (with the possible exception of
Awakened Lands & Wastelands) could become utterly
worthless as soon as SR4 hits the shelves. Sure, they
can still be drawn on for inspiration, but given what
we've been told about System Failure a number of very
fundamental changes would occur anyplace where
technology plays a significant role in everyday life.
The resultant GM guesswork might leave a campaign
utterly incompatible with canon once the next
sourcebook rolls off the presses.

I suppose it's always been part and parcel for the SR
line to continuously advance the storyline in order to
keep what is canon sufficiently vague for every GM's
interpretations and extrapolations to be as good as
canon. While I'm not super-aware (or skilled) where
RPG world development is concerned, it does seem as if
Shadowrun has been sitting on the slightly too dynamic
side of the fence; significantly outdating source
material published within the same edition just seems
bad form to me.

Take the whole comet thing; suddenly yet more people
with yet more funky mutations are running around all
over the world... and all that stuff about Joe's café
doing a great and tall latte frappé is still playable?
The GM decides (and can twist and turn it all to suit
the campaign), but I do think it's a bad thing if
changes to other aspects of a game world leave the
current canon too implausible (and thereby -IMHO-
unplayable). Perhaps sourcebooks should receive online
addendums when there is reason to suspect that their
contents are no longer sufficiently in line with
canon, but this might not be feasible from a
publishing point of view, let alone that it might only
cause more confusion.

Maybe RPG settings just aren't made for
standardisation. OTOH it would be nice to see a
quarterly (or demi-yearly), oficially (&
electronically) published (& possibly
subscription-based) "world events" newssheet, just so
the new material gets a chance to interact with the
old so that some important changes get canonised.
Perhaps these changes can even be player-submitted:
I'm imagining short news blurbs that can pass through
an approval process with the line developers. If
properly catalogued (think of the SR timeline) this
could even be a useful and long-lasting resource. OTOH
a well-crafted and comprehensive SR Wiki might be
quite capable of fulfilling this role (especially if
line devs and writers contribute to it!).

I do still hope that SR4 will see less far-reaching
gameworld developments, or that their occurrence will
at least be slowed down somewhat. I for one would
appreciate any additional time spent on crafting more
detailed settings and adventures. Perhaps this is the
route the line is in fact taking once the broad
outline sketch (i.e.: all the location books) and a
new, comprehensive ruleset (SR4) have been taken care
of.

By the way, I was wondering if anyone can confirm
whether the next upcoming SR4 sourcebook will be a
MegaCorp book.

cheers,

Jan Jaap

P.S.: I've not yet caught up entirely with the recent
flurry of list activity, so my apologies if this case
for a slower -or more comprehensive- plot development
cycle has already been made at length.

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From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:03:09 +0200

Message no. 4 According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05 12:30 the word on the
street was...

> I'm claiming that a fair conversion system would have
> to allow "Sammy X" to be just as good on the streets
> in 2070 as he would've been in 2065. Otherwise people
> might just throw away their old characters, unless
> they like a roleplaying challenge.

You are talking OOC stuff, but IMHO your initial post gave the
impression you were referring to IC reasons.

> [If what I say is right, Dixons must give Gurth money
> so he can keep up with the SOTA]

Not to keep up with SOTA, but to compensate for things becoming cheaper
over the years :)

> When converting an SR3 character to SR4 the 5 years
> that pass between the "end" of SR3 and where SR4 picks
> up have to be taken into account. The character would
> not sit still in that time and it is unlikely a
> zero-sum would result from its activities; the PC is
> likely to at least try to keep up with the SOTA.

There's an easy trick to do that, which I happen to have used yesterday
in my group's Deadlands game: "It's now a few months [years in SR4's
case) later, and you've made some money and spent some during your
travels -- surprisingly, this has left you with exactly the same amount
of money as at the end of last session :)".

> If conversion rules were to be official, or are
> adopted as a house rule by the GM this might still be
> an issue. I do agree that a dash of common sense would
> resolve any problems here. However, someone might
> claim to be making an SR3 character that is to be run
> through a conversion system for roleplaying reasons. A
> good conversion system should not leave that character
> any better or worse off for having gone through it.

This assumes SR3 and SR4 are compatible enough to allow this to be done
without problems. IMHO this is a slightly unrealistic hope :) Even
between SRII and SR3, where the basic game system remained unchanged,
converted characters were different from their previous incarnations;
with SR4 using a completely different rules set, I doubt you'll be able
to get as close as with SRII/SR3 simply because many things will work
differently, and so various "tricks" you built your character for, won't
apply or work anymore. It will also depend on the basic character type,
of course.

> Perhaps SR3 and SR4 are just mutually unintelligible
> game systems, though...

Only partly.

> I would like to see someone come up with a
> decent way to convert SR3 stats to SR4 to prove that
> SR3 and SR4 are still vaguely related games.

I don't think anybody can just yet, but IMHO character conversions
aren't going to be that hard, as long as you compensate for things like
the changed attributes -- which will throw things off, like I mentioned
above. It's not going to be a change like between AD&D and D&D3, just to
name a case in which really only your basic characteristics, class and
level could be kept when "porting" an old character.

> Where gameplay is concerned, consider that all the
> location sourcebooks (with the possible exception of
> Awakened Lands & Wastelands) could become utterly
> worthless as soon as SR4 hits the shelves. Sure, they
> can still be drawn on for inspiration

Isn't this much the same as using SR1-era location sourcebooks in an SR3
campaign? Before SONA, you had to use books like NAN1&2, NAGNA, Tir
Tairngire, etc. for information about North America, but most of those
were set in the early 2050s, not the early to mid 2060s as the game was.
Imagine taking a trip today to, say, Berlin with only a 15-year-old
guidebook to point out areas of interest...

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 09:24:27 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 5 --- Jan Jaap van Poelgeest <jjvanp@*****.com> wrote:

> --- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
>
> > According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 24-7-05
> > 23:40 the word on the
> > street was...
> >
>
> [pre-crash = post-crash stuff]
>
> I'm claiming that a fair conversion system would have
> to allow "Sammy X" to be just as good on the streets
> in 2070 as he would've been in 2065. Otherwise people
> might just throw away their old characters, unless
> they like a roleplaying challenge.

Errr... nonsense. A street sam who was cutting edge in 2065 might
well be obsolote in 2070. By the logic you just put forth, some
"fair conversion" in the capabilities of computers should have
existed so my spiffy new Pentium 100 with piles (16Mb) of RAM, a huge
(1.2Gb) hard drive, an amazing (Diamond Stealth 64) graphics card,
and other amazing peripherals (those "cool" speakers) was still worth
the metal and plastic it was made of a year later. In point of fact,
that computer (vintage 1996) slid from "wow" to "blah" faster than
its 100 Mhz clock could change a 1 to a 0. Moving a game setting
ahead an appreciable amount of time is the simplest caveat for game
designers, allowing them to specifically ~avoid~ having to provide
"fair conversion" rules. In the high tech setting of SR, an
"appreciable time" can be a couple of years. Now, what SR4 needs to
provide is a metamagical ability that allows a good healer magician
to ritually repair someone's Essence score. Thus, the once SOTA
sammie can get his now obsolote tech ripped out, his aura repaired,
and new nanotechnological wonders installed. That would be a fairly
generous, fairly logical, and fairly simple way to ease the SR3 to
SR4 conversion for those character that just can't be retired. You
could also use my solution for said conversion. Don't. Stick with
SR3 as long as possible. Hold out until your players beg and plead
for you to change. Keep holding out. Eventually, they will buy you
one or more of the core books for the new edition. By then, you will
have had time to kill all the old PCs, and you can start the campaign
from scratch. Thus killing both headaches (the cost of new books and
the PC conversion question) with one placebo.

======Korishinzo
--feeling particularly cycnical today *grin*

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From:	jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 09:28:14 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 6 --- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:

> According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05
> 12:30 the word on the
> street was...
>
> > [If what I say is right, Dixons must give Gurth
> money
> > so he can keep up with the SOTA]
>
> Not to keep up with SOTA, but to compensate for
> things becoming cheaper
> over the years :)

Let us take a camera (C1). It is released with a set
of features which we shall call F1. It is offered at
price P1.

After five years another camera is released whose
featureset F2 is more SOTA than the F1 of C1. It is
offered at price P2.

Assuming people are SOTA-pursuing, they will prefer C2
over C1 due to F2 being preferable (more SOTA!) than
F1. Supply & demand market mechanisms then dictate
that P1 be lower than P2.

Dixons has nothing to do with this SOTA-pursuant
preference of people or why the prices are different,
they just try to sell the cameras at a profit. Dixons
is not responsible for the SOTA and therefore does not
have to compensate previous customers for the
development of F2. While you could hold them
responsible for it (they sell the evil things!), you'd
be better off suing the manufacturer if you can
produce a credible case that they held back on
producing a good camera just so the next model would
be more desirable.

Perhaps Dixons was in fact party to this development,
as it'd mean more turnover for them, but I can't
offhandedly remember any cases where retailers got
involved with manufacturers in order to manipulate the
market like that.

What I'm claiming is that it would make sense to have
a "trade-in" (i.e.: get a discount on C2 when you
trade in C1) where PC conversion is concerned just to
keep players who don't want to give up their
characters interested when switching editions.

Since the featureset of a character in SR4 is presumed
to be superior to that of a character in SR3, all
SOTA-loving consumers of SR are supposed to pay the
price of conversion (in money, effort and lost nights
of sleep), least that can be done is to give players a
good reason to retain their SR3 characters that
they've come to know and love.

Since we're actually talking about entirely imaginary
entities here -as opposed to cameras- any imbalances
that a GM might encounter due to an overly beneficial
conversion system can be culled from the PC sheet by
introducing them to SR4's new and exciting
technologies the harsh way.

[more about character conversions]

Let us assume Zig and Zag are both starting characters
with the same equipment and capability to interact
with the game world (i.e.: lift equal amounts of
weight) in respectively SR3 and SR4. Surely Zig should
be the equal of Zag post-conversion?

Therefore step one would be a decent way to convert
raw attributes between editions. Once this is
possible, players can be given the opportunity to
"catch up" by letting them spend any existing funds on
new goodies and getting old ones' removed and sold
(i.e.: "you feel funny as the game mechanics suddenly
shift, here's five years of downtime").

One could consider allowing players the option of
freely trading in any equipment discontinued or
significantly changed in function between editions,
but one can also claim that this is the price of
conversion. I suppose this is especially applicable if
a character concept is broken when converted and the
resultant PC isn't much fun to play anymore.

> There's an easy trick to do that, which I happen to
> have used yesterday
> in my group's Deadlands game: "It's now a few months
> [years in SR4's
> case) later, and you've made some money and spent
> some during your
> travels -- surprisingly, this has left you with
> exactly the same amount
> of money as at the end of last session :)".

I would add: "your old enemies have all gotten better
and now rule the city... a passing yellowjacket takes
a few potshots at you." I suppose I'm saying this
because character progress has always been rather
rapid in the campaigns I've been in and it would seem
odd to presume that characters would suddenly settle
down and not progress in their downtime (not to
mention consume exactly what they produce). I do see
what you mean and how to make such a development
plausible, though... it's only a fantasy world, after
all.

[useless sourcebooks]

I suppose I just need to give myself a chance to catch
up to all the changes that've been taking place rather
than address complaints against a whole RPG setting.
Perhaps then I can start making some sense out of SR
again; as it is I've been feeling rather alienated
from the 6th world.

cheers,

Jan Jaap

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From:	scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 12:30:25 -0400

Message no. 7 ---------------------- multipart/signed attachment

On Jul 25, 2005, at 12:24, Ice Heart wrote:
> Now, what SR4 needs to
> provide is a metamagical ability that allows a good healer magician
> to ritually repair someone's Essence score. Thus, the once SOTA
> sammie can get his now obsolote tech ripped out, his aura repaired,
> and new nanotechnological wonders installed.

Forget the magic. Just rip it out leaving an essence hole. Now fill
that hole with the same goodies (which probably take less essence now),
and more goodies that were not available before (due to lack of
technology or lack of essence hole big enough for them).

--
Scott Harrison

---------------------- multipart/signed attachment--

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:47:17 +0200

Message no. 8 According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05 18:28 the word on the
street was...

> Assuming people are SOTA-pursuing, they will prefer C2
> over C1 due to F2 being preferable (more SOTA!) than
> F1. Supply & demand market mechanisms then dictate
> that P1 be lower than P2.

That is not what I read your original post on this to mean, however, and
therefore not what prompted me to say Dixons should (by the reasoning I
thought you were giving in that post) give me some of my money back.
What I understood you to say was that, if SR4 characters could get more
gear than SR3 characters for the same amount of starting money, then a
converted SR3 character should get that difference in money to spend.
Thus, my analogy with my camera, that cost more four years ago than
similar ones do today.

> Since the featureset of a character in SR4 is presumed
> to be superior to that of a character in SR3

That's where you're going wrong, if you ask me. In SR, a new edition
generally doesn't mean the new edition's characters will be better than
in the last one -- most SR3 gear is exactly the same as it was in SR1,
despite the game setting having advanced ±10 years between the two.

> Let us assume Zig and Zag are both starting characters

Another thing I have to correct you on ;) Zig and Zag are aliens from
the planet Zog. I have a Zig & Zag - Them Girls.mp3 to prove it :)

> with the same equipment and capability to interact
> with the game world (i.e.: lift equal amounts of
> weight) in respectively SR3 and SR4. Surely Zig should
> be the equal of Zag post-conversion?

And who says they are not? Or, to put it another way, who says they will
be? Or, yet another way, who cares if it leads to threads like this one?

> Therefore step one would be a decent way to convert
> raw attributes between editions. Once this is
> possible, players can be given the opportunity to
> "catch up" by letting them spend any existing funds on
> new goodies and getting old ones' removed and sold
> (i.e.: "you feel funny as the game mechanics suddenly
> shift, here's five years of downtime").

So now tell me, where exactly is the problem you keep talking about? All
of this is going to be both easy and of the sort of level that anyone
with a brain not made of cheese can work out...

> Perhaps then I can start making some sense out of SR
> again; as it is I've been feeling rather alienated
> from the 6th world.

There is a reason* that what's left of my group is currently playing
(non-d20) Deadlands at our weekly game session...

* Actually several, but only one of them is relevant as a reply to your
comment :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	l-hansen@*****.tele.dk (Lars Wagner Hansen)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:13:30 +0200

Message no. 9 From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
> According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05 18:28 the word on the
> street was...
>
>> Let us assume Zig and Zag are both starting characters
>
> Another thing I have to correct you on ;) Zig and Zag are aliens from the
> planet Zog. I have a Zig & Zag - Them Girls.mp3 to prove it :)

You are both wrong. Zig and Zag are existing official NPCs in Shadowrun
universe.

Bonus points for finding the reference.

Lars

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:50:52 +0200

Message no. 10 According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on 25-7-05 20:13 the word on the street
was...

> You are both wrong. Zig and Zag are existing official NPCs in Shadowrun
> universe.
>
> Bonus points for finding the reference.

One of the novels by Mike Stackpole, but I don't remember offhand which.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 11:55:41 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 11 > You are both wrong. Zig and Zag are existing official NPCs in
> Shadowrun universe.
>
> Bonus points for finding the reference.
>
> Lars

"Wolf and Raven". Pair of small time runners, nicknamed by Wolf in
semi-derogatory patronization.

How many bonus points? :p

======Korishinzo
--oooo, SR trivia, fun!

____________________________________________________
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From:	l-hansen@*****.tele.dk (Lars Wagner Hansen)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 21:00:26 +0200

Message no. 12 From: "Ice Heart" <korishinzo@*****.com>
>> You are both wrong. Zig and Zag are existing official NPCs in
>> Shadowrun universe.
>>
>> Bonus points for finding the reference.
>>
>> Lars
>
> "Wolf and Raven". Pair of small time runners, nicknamed by Wolf in
> semi-derogatory patronization.
>
> How many bonus points? :p

How many do you want?

Lars

From:	geoff@*************.co.uk (Euphonium)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:18:48 +0100

Message no. 13 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Lars Wagner Hansen" <l-hansen@*****.tele.dk>
To: "Shadowrun Discussion" <shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com>
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2005 7:13 PM
Subject: Re: SR4 Conversion

> From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
> > According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05 18:28 the word on the
> > street was...
> >
> >> Let us assume Zig and Zag are both starting characters
> >
> > Another thing I have to correct you on ;) Zig and Zag are aliens from
the
> > planet Zog. I have a Zig & Zag - Them Girls.mp3 to prove it :)
>
> You are both wrong. Zig and Zag are existing official NPCs in Shadowrun
> universe.
>
> Bonus points for finding the reference.
>
> Lars
>

Into The Shadows, page 201 (Would it help to say I'm Sorry?) and an earlier
novel & haven't got - Wolf & Raven. maybe?

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 12:28:23 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 14 > > How many bonus points? :p

> How many do you want?
> Lars

Depends on what the conversion rate to cold hard cash is these days.
Any currency market buffs on this list? We want to know how many of
Lars' bonus points I need to cash in to walk away with at least $10
(US). Anything less than that isn't worth it, and I'll have to
recind my trivia answer.

*wanders off to the sound of clown giggling* ;)

======Korishinzo
--long day at work, going slightly crazy

____________________________________________________
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From:	anders@**********.com (Anders Swenson)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 12:47:58 -0700

Message no. 15 On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:13:30 +0200
"Lars Wagner Hansen" <l-hansen@*****.tele.dk> wrote:
> From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
> > According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05 18:28 the word on the
> > street was...
> >
> >> Let us assume Zig and Zag are both starting characters
> >
. Zig and Zag are existing official NPCs in Shadowrun
> universe.
>
And compteant ones; on occassion I'll give that name to a duo of not quite
established PCs in a game.
--Anders

From:	jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:15:18 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 16 --- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:

> According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05
> 18:28 the word on the
> street was...

[cameras! Dixons!]

I refuse to accept that any Shadowrunner would sit
still and watch the SOTA fly by. IMHO, being a
shadowrunner means being the SOTA. This is why I
consider it a requirement for any fair SR3-to-SR4 to
give the PC some additional resources to spend on
goodies during the downtime. Consider it an
abstraction of the gains made in those years
effectively spent running around as an NPC while
remaining the same character. I realise this should
ideally be entirely the GM's call (given that campaign
balance comes first), but it wouldn't do justice to a
character if they weren't renumerated for being kicked
5 years up the timeline.

Any number of stories could be made up about
character's actual doings while under GM control, but
in that case a player could simply deny the GM the
right to have this say about their character and
refuse to play (or demand that the intermediate 5
years be played through). <personal consideration
about the act of telling people what is in-character
and what isn't deleted> While a GM can just give
people the choice between generating a new character
in SR4 or converting the SR3 character at what might
come down to a disadvantage, I just feel this is like
Dixons selling people a camera and then refusing to
honour the warranty :-D.

I suppose what this whole thing comes down to is that
in my experience most campaigns have focused on
character development rather than destruction. I
suppose it could be interesting to experience a
zero-sum "you all kind of stay the same" type of
campaign, but I don't as of yet know of any RPGs that
are written in a way that would enable this in a
fun&satisfactory manner.

[featuresets!]

Having not actually played SR1 or SR2, it is my
current understanding that a PCs potential
capabilities compared to the average human in those
editions would've been less due to MBW, Bioware etc.
not having been written into canon yet. Ergo: PCs
would've been somewhat less capable of becoming
superhumanly strong/magical/suave. Whether this makes
them more or less powerful I don't know (that
flesh-to-snot spell got written out, after all... and
they changed anchoring). Here's hoping that SR4 will
allow PCs yet more freedom in developing their
capabilities while remaining within canon.

> > Let us assume Zig and Zag are both starting
> characters
>
> Another thing I have to correct you on ;) Zig and
> Zag are aliens from
> the planet Zog. I have a Zig & Zag - Them Girls.mp3
> to prove it :)

Zig and Zag are what I came up with to replace "Sammy
X" (Sx) and "Sammy Y" (Sy) in an attempt to make it
all a bit more Shadowrunny. I read Wolf&Raven a while
ago and I did remotely recall the names being in there
when typing them, so it might've somehow made sense
for these practically featureless -yet very
reliable&useful- sammies to take the place of my own
inventions.

> So now tell me, where exactly is the problem you
> keep talking about? All
> of this is going to be both easy and of the sort of
> level that anyone
> with a brain not made of cheese can work out...

I just like making simple things very complicated so
the truly difficult stuff can be left for later. This
means I sometimes can't help being lazy-yet-very-busy
and seeking to detail matters in a manner that
attempts to breed discord (most of all within my own
mind) and is highly unproductive. It can be decent
practice when being a philosopher, but I'm beginning
to see the downside(s) to being untrue to oneself when
refusing to lose a what one can perceive as an
argument... (and yes, this goes all the way to "I'll
just be more stupid just so you can't make [or I can
ignore] your point"). I've been trying to find the
fundamental levels at which people can disagree and
have come to the conclusion that it is not impossible
to have an argument with a corpse.

> > Perhaps then I can start making some sense out of
> SR
> > again; as it is I've been feeling rather alienated
> > from the 6th world.
>
> There is a reason* that what's left of my group is
> currently playing
> (non-d20) Deadlands at our weekly game session...
>
> * Actually several, but only one of them is relevant
> as a reply to your
> comment :)

I've been slightly curious about that game. Don't know
why, but I suppose there are at least as many reasons
as there are people.

cheers,

Jan Jaap

(pardon the lack of obtuseness)

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From:	lrdslvrhnd@*****.com (Kevin McB)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:49:32 -0400

Message no. 17 On 7/25/05, Jan Jaap van Poelgeest <jjvanp@*****.com> wrote:
>
>
> --- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
>
> > According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05
> > 18:28 the word on the
> > street was...
>
> [cameras! Dixons!]
>
> I refuse to accept that any Shadowrunner would sit
> still and watch the SOTA fly by. IMHO, being a
> shadowrunner means being the SOTA. This is why I
> consider it a requirement for any fair SR3-to-SR4 to
> give the PC some additional resources to spend on
> goodies during the downtime. Consider it an
> abstraction of the gains made in those years
> effectively spent running around as an NPC while
> remaining the same character. I realise this should
> ideally be entirely the GM's call (given that campaign
> balance comes first), but it wouldn't do justice to a
> character if they weren't renumerated for being kicked
> 5 years up the timeline.
>
> Any number of stories could be made up about
> character's actual doings while under GM control, but
> in that case a player could simply deny the GM the
> right to have this say about their character and
> refuse to play (or demand that the intermediate 5
> years be played through). <personal consideration
> about the act of telling people what is in-character
> and what isn't deleted> While a GM can just give
> people the choice between generating a new character
> in SR4 or converting the SR3 character at what might
> come down to a disadvantage, I just feel this is like
> Dixons selling people a camera and then refusing to
> honour the warranty :-D.

A simple way around that is to have 'em not be around for those 5
years *g* Perhaps a run went bad, and an experimental machine or
ancient magical artifact went haywire and zapped you 5 years up the
timeline. Of course, in the process, the machine/artifact, and
everybody involved disappeared/were destroyed/were killed/etc.

Maybe for whatever reason - they got mad because of a run against
them, and wanted to take their time dealing with you, or you got
infected with a disease that they thought they might be able to cure
in a few more years, and they owed you - a corp decided to put them in
cryogenic suspension (or under a stasis spell) and they get pulled out
5 years later, either because the cure was found, or a rival rescued
you... and now they want your help in a little matter.

In such cases, you not only have them being on the obsolete end of the
SOTA spectrum - even though their Wired-2 works the exact same as the
current Wired-2, it takes up an extra 15% essence, that they could use
for other spiffy cyberware; and of course, their cyberdecks/programs
are pathetically outdated; and what the heck's going on with riggers
nowadays?! - you also have them wandering around in a world where the
rules have changed on them. What used to be acceptable behavior no
longer is; what used to be standard views on magic now have the same
status as a flat earth which the sun revolves. Their contacts are
dead or retired or in hiding, their houses have been repossessed by
the bank and sold at auction, or destroyed, their vehicles are in the
junkyard, everything they weren't currently carrying is gone. Massive
RPing opportunities involved, trying to get used to all the changes,
get new toys, get money to upgrade their cyberware, etc.

Of course, a kind and benevolent GM might let their secret stashes
still exist more or less whole ("Well, the spare guns you hid in a
niche in the sewer is still there... unfortunately, there was
obviously some flooding, and some neo-rats got at the plastic covering
them, so they're going to need some hefty cleaning before they can be
used... and all the ammo is pretty much scrap metal. But hey, at
least a couple of the certified credsticks are still good.") but
whoever heard of a kind and benevolent GM? 8-}

Kevin

From:	keith@***********.com (Keith Johnson)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 00:24:28 -0700

Message no. 18 > > I'm claiming that a fair conversion system would have
> > to allow "Sammy X" to be just as good on the streets
> > in 2070 as he would've been in 2065. Otherwise people
> > might just throw away their old characters, unless
> > they like a roleplaying challenge.
>
> Errr... nonsense. A street sam who was cutting edge in
>2065 might well be obsolote in 2070.

But that doesn't mean that he's just as good not as good
in 2070 as he was in 2065... it's just that the world
as gotten much better. That's what SotA is all about.

My not so humble opinion is that if you build a character
in the 2057-2060 timeline (SR3), and you get that guy
a tricked out SotA set of wires, that guy's wires are 10
years old and out of date in 2070 (SR4), and so if the
rules put your guy at a technological disadvantage, that's
life in the shadows.

If you're telling me that you run a street sam who runs
out and gets MAJOR FRICKIN SURGERY anytime something
new comes out... wow... you're messed up.

>By the logic you just put forth, some "fair conversion"
>in the capabilities of computers should have existed so
>my spiffy new...

[Description of the exact computer I'm typing this email
on deleted]

Your analogy is an odd point of view. The way I see it,
your spiffy 'new' laptop is exactly as good as it was
when you bought it.

But a decade later, the rules have gone from SR3 to SR4
and the scale we use is now GHz and so with the new
rules, your laptop which used to be 100 is now .1 and
your ego takes a blow... but it is still exactly as
good as it was when you bought it.

Now back to your Sammie...

Getting wired relflexes give a risk of death and 6 months
of recovery time... how often would you subject yourself
to that sort of procedure? SotA would have to be a
significant upgrade to make me do that?

When I hear (read) people talking about upgrading
existing characters to the new rules and wanting to
take gear and mods and 'make them newer versions' the
role player in me screams MUNCHKIN... I know that's
going too far and I don't really mean it, but my
point is that if you've got a guy who's 10 years in
the business... his stuff should be 10 years old
or it should've been upgraded as part of a
'character' thing.

And if you do that, then there's no need to do any
'conversion' from what you had to what you will have
because it's an in-game-esque upgrade. No need to
even think about it.

Peace,

Keith

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:06:04 +0200

Message no. 19 According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05 23:15 the word on the
street was...

> I refuse to accept that any Shadowrunner would sit
> still and watch the SOTA fly by. IMHO, being a
> shadowrunner means being the SOTA.

IMHO that probably only started when the concept was introduced into
game rules for stuff other than software, about ten years after SR first
came out.

> This is why I
> consider it a requirement for any fair SR3-to-SR4 to
> give the PC some additional resources to spend on
> goodies during the downtime.

Whereas I don't see a need, unless you're going to apply whatever
getting-behind-the-SOTA rules exist to the PCs' gear for those 5+ years
of downtime. But the quick way, like the money solution I mentioned
yesterday, is to simply assume they kept their gear SOTA and spent the
necessary money on doing so...

> I just feel this is like
> Dixons selling people a camera and then refusing to
> honour the warranty :-D.

They actually try to sell you an extended 3-year warranty, you know :)

> Having not actually played SR1 or SR2, it is my
> current understanding that a PCs potential
> capabilities compared to the average human in those
> editions would've been less due to MBW, Bioware etc.
> not having been written into canon yet.

Bioware was introduced in the Shadowtech sourcebook from early 1992 and
MBW is from Cybertechnology from 1995 (SRII was released in summer 1992,
and SR3 in 1998 :)

But yes, you are correct in that these introduced things that were not
available to characters before, so if you played, for example, a
character in 1990 and then came back to the game a few years later, you
might end up in a campaign where other PCs had bioware and you were
therefore left behind SOTA.

However, the gear available in the _basic rules_ has never really
changed. Of course, some things were added and others removed in the
various editions up until now, but bioware or MBW have never been in the
main rules, so if that's all you're playing with (for example because
it's all that's available) you wouldn't be behind SOTA simply because
nobody else will have access to the better stuff either. With previous
editions, of course, there was the advantage that the rules didn't
change much, so you could use Shadowtech with SRII and SR3 in order to
get bioware, whereas using Man & Machine with SR4 may present more
problems -- but none that anyone with a bit of rules knowledge won't be
able to solve on a case-by-case basis until the revised tech sourcebooks
become available, I'm sure.

>>There is a reason* that what's left of my group is
>>currently playing
>>(non-d20) Deadlands at our weekly game session...
>
> I've been slightly curious about that game. Don't know
> why, but I suppose there are at least as many reasons
> as there are people.

Give it a try sometime :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:12:45 +0200

Message no. 20 According to Kevin McB, on 26-7-05 00:49 the word on the street was...

> A simple way around that is to have 'em not be around for those 5
> years *g* Perhaps a run went bad, and an experimental machine or
> ancient magical artifact went haywire and zapped you 5 years up the
> timeline. Of course, in the process, the machine/artifact, and
> everybody involved disappeared/were destroyed/were killed/etc.

You know, that sounds suspiciously like the Cyberpunk 3rd edition demo I
played at Euro GenCon '97 (!) ... The adventure began along the lines of
us being on some kind of mission in LEO in 2020, something going wrong,
and our characters getting frozen, then dropping back to earth a bunch
of years later. Que us discovering how much the world had changed from
the CP2020 setting. And then last week, I happened to take a look at
this: http://www.talsorian.com/news.shtml :)

> Of course, a kind and benevolent GM might let their secret stashes
> still exist more or less whole ("Well, the spare guns you hid in a
> niche in the sewer is still there... unfortunately, there was
> obviously some flooding, and some neo-rats got at the plastic covering
> them, so they're going to need some hefty cleaning before they can be
> used... and all the ammo is pretty much scrap metal.

If there's one thing that will remain usable for ages, it's ammunition.
You will of course need to be careful with old rounds that have been
lying around in the dirt for a long time, but people still regularly
fire stocks of ammunition that have been dug up in areas of heavy
fighting in World War II.

> But hey, at
> least a couple of the certified credsticks are still good.")

"I still have that library book...!"

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:20:19 +0200

Message no. 21 According to Keith Johnson, on 26-7-05 09:24 the word on the street was...

> My not so humble opinion is that if you build a character
> in the 2057-2060 timeline (SR3), and you get that guy
> a tricked out SotA set of wires, that guy's wires are 10
> years old and out of date in 2070 (SR4), and so if the
> rules put your guy at a technological disadvantage, that's
> life in the shadows.

Whereas if you look at them in terms of game rules, nothing will really
change, IMHO. An SR3 character with wired-2 is just as fast as an SRII
character with wired-2 (and otherwise identical stats) -- it's only that
instead of getting 2 or 3 actions before anyone else does, under SR3
rules the character will get 2 or 3 actions _after_ everyone else has
had one...

> [Description of the exact computer I'm typing this email
> on deleted]
>
> Your analogy is an odd point of view. The way I see it,
> your spiffy 'new' laptop is exactly as good as it was
> when you bought it.

Agreed. As long as you're only going to use it to run 1996-'98 (or so)
software on, there will be no problems whatsoever. But if you want to
run current software on that same machine, it will be (as the beautiful
Dutch saying goes) slower than thick shit.

But this makes it a bad comparison to street sams, because SOTA for
computers goes a lot faster that SOTA for most other things. A car from
1995 is not as far behind a modern car in terms of performance as a
computer from that same year is behind a modern one.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	jjvanp@*****.com (Jan Jaap van Poelgeest)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 04:35:43 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 22 --- Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:

> According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 25-7-05
> 23:15 the word on the
> street was...

[snip, snip, snip it all. why? because it's all very
reasonable]

I suppose the essential quandary is: does the move
from SR3 to SR4 make equipment function so differently
that what is SOTA (i.e.: effective in the shadows) in
SR3 is no longer so in SR4?

It seems to me that it will do. Going by previous
developments in the SR universe, 5 years of game time
is likely to involve the introduction of new body
modification tech, thereby leaving any character
reliant on the SOTA for an edge eating the dust of
newly generated SR4 characters. Since some of the
people on this list have actually played SR4, I
suppose I could be presuming too much, but it does
seem that I'm not entirely missing the mark. While the
basic cyber body mods might remain more or less the
same old, I'm guessing that the ways in which the
various parts can combine will have been reconceived
somewhat.

Given that we've been told that attributes will affect
the character's capabilities differently (i.e.:
reaction being an actual attribute now rather than the
amalgam of a combination of attributes) & that magic
will have utterly changed (I imagine converting
awakened characters could be an utter nightmare), I
should say that it might in fact be impossible to find
a decent method of converting to SR4 any existing SR3
character without losing an unacceptable amount of
effectiveness due to the changed rules system.

Perhaps it'll still be rather nice to play an SR3
character in SR4, but I do suppose anyone who wants to
be a SOTA-loving shadowrunner would be best off
regenerating their character under the new ruleset,
character history permitting. Seeing as how an
existing campaign is kept going, it might make sense
to award access to a similar amount of funds and
karma, as these will probably retain their value
reasonably well between editions. 5 years of game time
could be enough to change anything not related to
these basic valuations (so I suppose flaws and debts
would have to be balanced against benefits).

So I suppose the best conversion system I can come up
with is: "System Failure, everything in the setting
now functions differently but looks the same (except
for the new stuff :). Here's the new ruleset and your
accumulated benefits, go regenerate that PC to your
liking and don't make it too different or you'll lose
the latter. Don't spend it all either; those flaws are
still around and your liver remains pawned to the
triads to cover that mob loan whose interest is due
Real Soon. Now's you chance to pay it off, though."

cheers,

Jan Jaap

____________________________________________________
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From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 19:11:38 +0200

Message no. 23 According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 26-7-05 13:35 the word on the
street was...

> [snip, snip, snip it all. why? because it's all very
> reasonable]

In that case, somebody else must have posted using my nick... ;)

> Since some of the
> people on this list have actually played SR4, I
> suppose I could be presuming too much, but it does
> seem that I'm not entirely missing the mark.

Without saying too much, you may be right in some ways, and wrong in
others :)

> Given that we've been told that attributes will affect
> the character's capabilities differently (...) I
> should say that it might in fact be impossible to find
> a decent method of converting to SR4 any existing SR3
> character without losing an unacceptable amount of
> effectiveness due to the changed rules system.

I don't think it will be impossible, and probably not even very
difficult, if you're willing to accept differences that may be
inevitable due to the new system.

> Perhaps it'll still be rather nice to play an SR3
> character in SR4, but I do suppose anyone who wants to
> be a SOTA-loving shadowrunner would be best off
> regenerating their character under the new ruleset,
> character history permitting.

That was certainly the case with SRII -> SR3. I remember converting a
decker PC's stats and being very unhappy with the outcome; re-doing him
entirely with the SR3 chargen rules also wasn't perfect, but better than
the straight conversion.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	reynardsurface@*****.com (Pace)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 10:26:39 -0700

Message no. 24 For cyber-folk, at least, the change should be fairly straightforward,
since most cyberware adds dice, rather than adjusting TNs. (with few
exceptions). Deckers will be the hardest hit, I anticipate, since one
of their primary dynamics is TN alteration. Most of the other systems
favor dice over TN mod, and should require only a sanity check on the
number of dice involved.

Personally, I'm excited about the change. Adding/subtracting dice is
easier and more managable than altering TNs. Lose a die, and I have
one less chance for success. Raise the TN, and my chance of success on
every die is lessened.

On 7/26/05, Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
> According to Jan Jaap van Poelgeest, on 26-7-05 13:35 the word on the
> street was...
>
> > [snip, snip, snip it all. why? because it's all very
> > reasonable]
>
> In that case, somebody else must have posted using my nick... ;)
>
> > Since some of the
> > people on this list have actually played SR4, I
> > suppose I could be presuming too much, but it does
> > seem that I'm not entirely missing the mark.
>
> Without saying too much, you may be right in some ways, and wrong in
> others :)
>
> > Given that we've been told that attributes will affect
> > the character's capabilities differently (...) I
> > should say that it might in fact be impossible to find
> > a decent method of converting to SR4 any existing SR3
> > character without losing an unacceptable amount of
> > effectiveness due to the changed rules system.
>
> I don't think it will be impossible, and probably not even very
> difficult, if you're willing to accept differences that may be
> inevitable due to the new system.
>
> > Perhaps it'll still be rather nice to play an SR3
> > character in SR4, but I do suppose anyone who wants to
> > be a SOTA-loving shadowrunner would be best off
> > regenerating their character under the new ruleset,
> > character history permitting.
>
> That was certainly the case with SRII -> SR3. I remember converting a
> decker PC's stats and being very unhappy with the outcome; re-doing him
> entirely with the SR3 chargen rules also wasn't perfect, but better than
> the straight conversion.
>
> --
> Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
> de limme
> -> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
> -> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-
>
> GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
> O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
> Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
>

--
-Pace-

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered
mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live,
and too rare to die." - Hunter S. Thompson

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 19:51:05 +0200

Message no. 25 According to Pace, on 26-7-05 19:26 the word on the street was...

> Personally, I'm excited about the change. Adding/subtracting dice is
> easier and more managable than altering TNs. Lose a die, and I have
> one less chance for success. Raise the TN, and my chance of success on
> every die is lessened.

There is a problem with adjusting dice, though. At times, things will be
obvious to the players that they should not know about -- by changing
the TN, the GM can account for these without informing the players, but
it's a bit difficult to secretly remove some of their dice :(

For example, say a PC is under the influence of a critter power that
reduces his dice pools, but the PC isn't aware of it because he failed a
Perception test to spot the critter (this is not a rare occurance in SR,
in my experience). Just by saying "Roll three fewer dice" you are
telling the players _something_ is up; and if you do this for every test
they'll start looking for the cause, even if their characters wouldn't
notice anything wrong except for failing more often than usual.

Partly, of course, this also exists when changing the TN -- players see
their rolls, and if they don't succeed when they have a bunch of high
rolls, they'll expect something to be up. But not as quickly as when
changing the number of dice, IME.

<GridSec>BTW, could you please reply below quoted text, and trim your
quotes, like I did here? Thanks :)</GridSec>

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	reynardsurface@*****.com (Pace)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:04:16 -0700

Message no. 26 On 7/26/05, Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
>
> There is a problem with adjusting dice, though. At times, things will be
> obvious to the players that they should not know about -- by changing
> the TN, the GM can account for these without informing the players, but
> it's a bit difficult to secretly remove some of their dice :(
<<Snipped example>>

Hrm. Well, I've not played it, but I had assumed that success
Threshhold could be altered. Regardless, that sort of imperfect
information is not my style. I'm always clear about the TNs and so
forth, even when it reveals information like you mention. It promotes
rules knowledge and OOC discussion of IC reality. Your method is
valid, but it can mystify new players, and some GMs might use the
hidden mechanic to railroad the players into failing when they
shouldn't. That's just my observation, though.

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:47:24 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 27 > Hrm. Well, I've not played it, but I had assumed that success
> Threshhold could be altered. Regardless, that sort of imperfect
> information is not my style. I'm always clear about the TNs and so
> forth, even when it reveals information like you mention. It
> promotes rules knowledge and OOC discussion of IC reality. Your
> method is valid, but it can mystify new players, and some GMs might
> use the hidden mechanic to railroad the players into failing when
> they shouldn't. That's just my observation, though.

I do not tell my players the TN for a task under the normal course of
play. They roll their dice and relate the humber to me, usually with
a hastily scribbled note while I am helping some other player figure
out their dice for a given roll. I look at the numbers and tell them
what happens. Now, there are times when a character should be able
to know approximately how hard something. For example, if a PC is
running across a rooftop, senses a drop, and hurls themself over it
hoping to land safely on the other side, they have no reason to know
their chance of success (this happened in a combat scenario). But,
if they walk up, examine the gap, their traction, and other factors,
they have a reasonable chance of correctly guessing their chance of
making the jump. Thus, players who sacrifice actions/time to make
observation tests and knowledge skill rolls will be told their TN,
because that is analagous to their character developing an idea of
their chances of success. As an example, in a recent SR game, one of
the players created a very meticulous sniper. The character had a
Background Knowledge for their Rifles skill and an Interest Knowledge
called Sniping Tactics. They would sight in a shot using an
Observation test, followed by a Rifles BK and a Sniping roll. The
use of these 3 actions gave them, In and Out of Character, a very
clear idea of how feasible the shot was. Then they set about Aiming
and shooting. In those cases, I had no problem telling them they had
x TN. And if they achieved what should have been successes and
failed to get the kill, they should know In Character that something
is up.

In other words, whether you tell your players their TN or tell them
how many dice to roll, you are conveying tangible information about
the game world/physics to them. That information is going to
influence their actions, even if it should not. Even a very skilled
shooter should not know exactly what their chance of hitting a moving
target at night in the rain is. In my games, TN's of 2-4 are fairly
routine activities, almost too easy to ask for a roll. TN's of
5-6(7) are challenging. 8-10 is getting very hard. Beyond that, the
task is probably best reconsidered. I am sure this TN spread is true
for most GMs and Players. So, if someone asks me what their TN is in
the middle of a tense situation with no actions used for observation,
my typical response is to say "seems simple" or "that's going to be a
challenge" or "this is starting to look like a bad idea". Never the
actual number, unless they actively pause and try to gather further
information.

Yes, changing the dice pool is probably more intuitively obvious and
easier to grasp/remember for players of all skill levels. It also is
going to create the same kind of dice monsters that various WoD games
did. Personally, I don't like it. I like the players to be
responsible for knowing how good their character is at something (the
number of dice to be rolls), but not necessarily aware of all the
environmental factors in a situation (the TN needed and/or success
threshold required). To the extent that I often don't tell players
in the heat of combat what sort of injuries they sustain. They have
to stop and perform a Biotech skill roll on themself (or assense
themself) to gauge how injured they are. I just describe things and
make a note of accumualted TN mods as I go. This has always been,
ignoring varying degrees of clunky implementation over the years, a
great strength of Shadowrun. There is information the players should
know, and information they should only be able to guess at. The twin
variables of dice pool and TN neatly simulate this. I feel that a
unique, and for me essential, element of the game is lost if you
eliminate this.

I will continue to read reviews of SR4, and may someday purchase the
main book just to perform a first hand analysis. However, as it
stands, I would rather keep developing house rules to streamline SR3
than play a radically different set of core mechanics under SR4. I
am no more in favor of a WoD knockoff than I was a D&D knockoff. D20
Shadowrun and Heaps-O-Dice Shadowrun are both too distant a departure
for me to accept.

======Korishinzo
--"Don't ask me what the TN is, tell me what you rolled." (Said by
me an average of three times per game session since 1989.) :)

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From:	reynardsurface@*****.com (Pace)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 12:12:51 -0700

Message no. 28 On 7/26/05, Ice Heart <korishinzo@*****.com> wrote:
<snip snip>

> D20 Shadowrun and Heaps-O-Dice Shadowrun are both too distant a departure
> for me to accept.

Heaps-O-Dice Shadowrun? How is that a departure from the current game?
I know I've got my 5 gallon "dice bucket" already. It's the primary
complaint most have against SR, in my personal experience.

As for the rest, I used to play this way, but frankly, I got tired of
being the only one that knew how to competently gm the system, and
having to keep track of the vagaries of each sheet. If you lay the
modifiers out on the table, and let the characters apply their
cyberware and so forth, and calculate it themselves, the game system
runs a lot smoother, and you soon find yourself explaining less, and
playing more. If they don't know what's causing the mod, just don't
tell them. They may look around for something funny (and they may not
find it), but really, there's no reason to hide systemic information
from players, in my opinion. Thematic information is an entirely
different matter, and is where the system truly shines. Your methods
and objections are valid, but it leads to closed-book GM'ing, in my
opinion. Not saying you're wrong, or even that you are doing it, I'm
just stating my opinion.

From:	l-hansen@*****.tele.dk (Lars Wagner Hansen)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 21:40:48 +0200

Message no. 29 From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
> According to Pace, on 26-7-05 19:26 the word on the street was...
>
>> Personally, I'm excited about the change. Adding/subtracting dice is
>> easier and more managable than altering TNs. Lose a die, and I have
>> one less chance for success. Raise the TN, and my chance of success on
>> every die is lessened.
>
> There is a problem with adjusting dice, though. At times, things will be
> obvious to the players that they should not know about -- by changing the
> TN, the GM can account for these without informing the players, but it's a
> bit difficult to secretly remove some of their dice :(
>
> For example, say a PC is under the influence of a critter power that
> reduces his dice pools, but the PC isn't aware of it because he failed a
> Perception test to spot the critter (this is not a rare occurance in SR,
> in my experience). Just by saying "Roll three fewer dice" you are telling
> the players _something_ is up; and if you do this for every test they'll
> start looking for the cause, even if their characters wouldn't notice
> anything wrong except for failing more often than usual.

Maybe the power will be changed to "Players will have to roll 2 more
success".

But the outcome would be the same. A player will know that he usually needs
to roll 2 succeses, and suddenly he doesn't succede with even 3 successes.
The player will know something is up, eve though the character wouldn't
know.

In any case I still think a fixed T# is one of the bad things from SR4.

Lars

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:17:22 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 30 --- Pace <reynardsurface@*****.com> wrote:

> On 7/26/05, Ice Heart <korishinzo@*****.com> wrote:

> > D20 Shadowrun and Heaps-O-Dice Shadowrun are both too distant a
> > departure for me to accept.

> Heaps-O-Dice Shadowrun? How is that a departure from the current
> game? I know I've got my 5 gallon "dice bucket" already. It's the
> primary complaint most have against SR, in my personal experience.

The average dice pool in most of games, especially since we switched
to SR3, is about 5 dice. A foolish or desperate player might throw
enough Combat or Spell Pool dice at this amount to double it. 10
dice. I have seen much worse. I ran a WoD werewolf game for a year
where dice pools were routinely this big or bigger. But that was not
really the point of my use of the phrase 'Heaps-O-Dice'. I was
referring to the following style of situation.

Player A has a troll sammie with a gyronmount and big gun and he is
doing something typically gun bunny like belting on some AV ammo and
emptying the thing into a fully armored Mobmaster. He pulls over his
tray of dice and starts doing this:

"Okay, I have Heavy Weapons at 5 >rattle<, oh but I specialized in
the Vindicator >more rattling<. Okay, I have a smartlink 2 >rattle<
and the gyromount >rattle rattle<. Oops, you are right, I was
running. >rattle rattle< But the gyromount offsets some of that too.
>rattle<. Okay, I am going to fire full auto. >rattle< Wait,
what's my visibility? >rattle<

You see, in my experiences, only the smallest fraction of players
bother to really learn the mechanics. Certainly, a precious precious
few ever learn them well enough to calculate anything quickly. And
even less of those players bother to figure out what they are going
do, to whom, and how before they are called by the GM for their third
action in a 3 second combat round that is going on 45 minutes to
resolve. So I prefer this scenario:

Player A: I wanna shoot it with the minigun.
Me: Roll heavy weapons, plus any combat pool you want to use.
Player A: How much can I use again? And how much do I have?
Me: You have 7, as detailed under "Combat Pool" on your character
sheet. You've spent 3 so far this Turn. That leaves 4. And you can
add pool dice equal to your base skill. Which is 7 with that minigun
you are specialized in.
Player A: What's my target?
Me: Just write down what you rolled on each of those dice and toss me
the note. I'll tell you what happens. Meanwhile... actions on Phase
7. Yes, Player B, you were casting a spell you said?

By the time this exchange is half done, I have pulled up a mental
image of the scenario and referenced my memory of the firearm's
combat mods. I know how injured the character is. I can calculate
the target number while the player is still remembering that his
Heavy Weapons skill is listed under Active Skills and that the
numbers beside the words are the dice he rolls. Maybe I am cursed
with an inordinate number of atavistic throwbacks at my gaming table,
but more likely, the vast majority of people (gamers included) are
too mentally lazy to become conversant in the system. Okay, I'll
stop ranting. *grin* My point is, players are responisble for the
dice they roll, and I am responsible for knowing what the roll
translates into in the game. So they don't need to be figuring out
anything that is not printed on their character sheet. Period.

> As for the rest, I used to play this way, but frankly, I got tired
> of being the only one that knew how to competently gm the system,
> and having to keep track of the vagaries of each sheet. If you lay
> the modifiers out on the table, and let the characters apply their
> cyberware and so forth, and calculate it themselves, the game
> system runs a lot smoother, and you soon find yourself explaining
> less, and playing more. If they don't know what's causing the mod,
> just don't tell them. They may look around for something funny (and
> they may not find it), but really, there's no reason to hide
> systemic information from players, in my opinion. Thematic
> information is an entirely different matter, and is where the
> system truly shines. Your methods and objections are valid, but it
> leads to closed-book GM'ing, in my opinion. Not saying you're
> wrong, or even that you are doing it, I'm just stating my opinion.

It is closed book gaming, but not because I am banning my players
from opening a book. I own multiple copies of core books for a
reason. Back when I ran SR2, I had a copy of the main book available
for each and every player. And those players would sit there, with
their character sheet on top of the closed book and ask me what their
TN to resist drain was. Or what type of spell Powerdart was. Ignore
the fact that my character sheet had space for that information, set
up to intuitively mimic the spell entry format in the book, so they
could copy said info to the sheet while they had the book open to
select the spell. They don't do it.

Under past versions of SR, dice pools were fairly constant, and TN's
were highly variable. The onus of abstracting the environment for a
given set of actions into a final TN was on the GM. The player was
responsible for a fairly static piece of information with fairly
limited room for variation (bonus dice pools). Under SR4 (what
little we know) the TN is constant and the dice are highly variable.
So now the GM is required to abstract the environment into a modifier
to dice pool, inform the player, and then still wait while the player
figures out what their base dice pool was. Because the players still
won't, by and large, learn the system well enough to know. What they
will do, is ask why their dice pools are changing. They will want
the details. Why? It is psychology. The dice in their hand, they
have a sense of control over. The numbers on their character sheet,
they have a sense of control over. The mystical, arcane vagueries of
the environment their character is stumbling around blindly within,
they have a distinct sense of zero control over. Now the GM is going
to look at them and tell them how many dice to pick up and roll.
Eroding, subtly but surely, something that was once their's to
control. I realize it is superstitious nonsense to think that way.
But, I also have players who will sit and roll 6-siders quietly on a
book cover for 30 minutes straight, setting them aside according to
some secret formula. When asked what they are doing, they respond
quite seriously, that they "rolling all the 1's out". [yes, I was
floored - but I am not kidding and neither were they]

Closed book gaming is not some conspiracy enacted against players.
It is, in fact, exactly how most players want it, in my experience.
"Let me play with my dice, tell me what happens." So, since I (the
GM) have to know and calculate all the modifiers anyway, why bother
dragging the player kicking and screaming into the thick of the
process? Let them know what they need to know. Specifically: the
stuff on their character sheet. If they would bother to learn even
that, the game would flow smoother. SR4 is going to be a mess the
moment it gets out of the hands of experienced gamers, most of them
long time game masters, and into the hands of the masses. Combat
will take longer than ever, I predict. Two types of people do well
at keeping a game moving. The gamer who has no clue, and cares only
about telling the GM what they want their charcter to do, thrilled
when the world reacts to their vicarious actions. And the gamer who
has spent most of their time behind the GM screen. They have a keen
sense of what they should be responisble for, and what the GM should
be. They know the system more than a player needs to, and scale that
knowledge back. They understand the nuts and bolts enough to relax
and focus on their character. In between these two poles lies
everything from number-crunching munchkins to people for whom gaming
SR or playing a console FPS are roughly an equal toss-up. The former
want to know the rules only to seek out loop-holes. The latter will
ask you a dozen times a game session what they have to do to make
their guy shoot someone. In either case, they should be handed the
simplest possible interface (fixed dice pool/optical mouse) and told
to point, click, and let the GM worry about the devil in the details
(aka all the myriad ways they can miss or hit, fail or succeed - the
TN and its mods). At the poles you have the rules-clueless newbie
and the rules-relaxed veteran, both of whom are already happily doing
just that.

That is my considerably-more-than-2-cents worth. :)

======Korishinzo
--yep, still cynical I guess

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From:	snicker@*******.net (snicker@*******.net)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 20:24:39 +0000

Message no. 31 > -----Original Message-----
> From: Ice Heart [mailto:korishinzo@*****.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 26, 2005 08:17 PM

>
> Player A: I wanna shoot it with the minigun.
> Me: Roll heavy weapons, plus any combat pool you want to use.
> Player A: How much can I use again? And how much do I have?
> Me: You have 7, as detailed under "Combat Pool" on your character
> sheet. You've spent 3 so far this Turn. That leaves 4. And you can
> add pool dice equal to your base skill. Which is 7 with that minigun
> you are specialized in.
> Player A: What's my target?
> Me: Just write down what you rolled on each of those dice and toss me
> the note. I'll tell you what happens. Meanwhile... actions on Phase
> 7. Yes, Player B, you were casting a spell you said?

You've been to my games? I've long since given up expecting the players to know their
numbers - mainly because the ones who do are powergaming and squeezing every advantage out
of the dice instead of out of their imaginations. When my players stop looking at numbers
and just tell me what they're doing, it becomes a LOT more fun (and combat runs quicker
and more interesting, too....)

*snicker*

From:	reynardsurface@*****.com (Pace)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:25:13 -0700

Message no. 32 Pace: I disagree.

Game show Host: Circle Gets The Square!

*cue hollywood squares music*

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:32:52 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 33 --- Pace <reynardsurface@*****.com> wrote:

> Pace: I disagree.
>
> Game show Host: Circle Gets The Square!
>
> *cue hollywood squares music*

*sends Whoopi Goldberg and Gilbert Godfried stunt-doubles to smite
with extreme prejudice*

*cue musical montage by Queen*

*grin*

======Korishinzo
--you are welcome to sit at my gaming table and cure me of cynicism
regarding the average player's mental effort

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From:	reynardsurface@*****.com (Pace)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:40:29 -0700

Message no. 34 Ug. Sorry, that was not intended to be sent without further reply. My mistake.

I find that what players want to know is "what's going on here." No.
They won't sit and read a book and learn it, because that's really no
way to learn. The best way is to sit down and play, and go over each
system slowly. Will they memorize it all? Nope. Will they remember it
when prodded, and know where in the books to look? Yes. Personally, I
play most of my shadowrun online, which means I'm typically dealing
with a different set of characters almost every time. There will
always be people who don't know the system, as long as there are GMs
who expect them to learn it on their own time. Personally? I use a
system whereby the wound, environmental and external modifiers for
each person are on display (with the reasoning "unknown modifier", if
they haven't figured it out ICly.) and then I tell the player to
declare their dice, apply their own TN mods, and roll. If they forget
something, it's typically to their own detriment.

This can be easily done with two sets of colored markers at the gaming
table, and makes learning rules much simpler. A player's ignorance can
be cured, but only if they are allowed to help implement the rules. No
one ever mastered anything without practical application. I think you
give your players too little credit.

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 11:08:45 +0200

Message no. 35 According to Pace, on 26-7-05 20:04 the word on the street was...

> Hrm. Well, I've not played it, but I had assumed that success
> Threshhold could be altered.

That's a more serious alteration -- only one in three dice is going to
succeed, on average (since you need a 5 or 6 on the die), but you _can_
get more than that. However, it means that increasing the threshold by 1
basically requires the player to have three more dice in order to
succeed. Not to mention it can put success completely out of reach if
the threshold goes up too far (2 dice vs. threshold 3 = automatic
failure, after all).

> Regardless, that sort of imperfect
> information is not my style. I'm always clear about the TNs and so
> forth, even when it reveals information like you mention.

Different GM style, I guess -- I hardly ever tell my players what they
need to roll even if it would be fairly obvious.

> It promotes
> rules knowledge and OOC discussion of IC reality. Your method is
> valid, but it can mystify new players

Which is why I tell new players more than I do veterans :) But I still
don't mention _everything_ to new players (partly because it confuses
them, partly for the same reason I keep TNs etc. away from players in
general).

> and some GMs might use the
> hidden mechanic to railroad the players into failing when they
> shouldn't. That's just my observation, though.

That requires an honest GM who knows when to fudge things and when not
to. The other GM in my group has a habit of letting things happen almost
regardless of dice rolls (which is why we don't let him be GM all the
time :) but I think I'm pretty objective -- I only really fudge rolls in
order to save players' skins, but I don't tell them about that, either.
(Leading to the occasional accusation that I'm out to kill PCs, because
I don't obviously pull punches.)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 11:10:39 +0200

Message no. 36 According to Ice Heart, on 26-7-05 20:47 the word on the street was...

> Heaps-O-Dice Shadowrun

I wouldn't worry too much about that, if I were you.

--
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de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
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GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 11:17:12 +0200

Message no. 37 According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on 26-7-05 21:40 the word on the street
was...

> Maybe the power will be changed to "Players will have to roll 2 more
> success".

See my reply to Pace for some thoughts on this :)

> But the outcome would be the same. A player will know that he usually
> needs to roll 2 succeses, and suddenly he doesn't succede with even 3
> successes. The player will know something is up, eve though the
> character wouldn't know.

True, and I think I mentioned this kind of thing in the post you replied
to. It's something that TN adjustment gets around nicely, most of the
time, but which SR4 is probably going to be a bit more problematic with
-- at least for GMs like me who prefer to keep this kind of info secret.
Then again, there's always the GM screen to roll dice behind. A few
years ago I used to roll PCs' Perception tests behind the screen, for
example, so they wouldn't know anything just by looking at the dice.

> In any case I still think a fixed T# is one of the bad things from SR4.

It does speed up a play a lot, though. Instead of:

"What were your rolls?"
"1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7 and 13."
"Okay, wait a sec while I figure out how many successes you
have against a TN I'm not going to tell you..."
*brain noises*
"Okay, such and such happens."

you have:

"How many hits did you roll?"
"Two."
"This and that happens."

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
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GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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From:	graht1@*****.com (Graht)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 07:55:30 -0600

Message no. 38 On 7/27/05, Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
> According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on 26-7-05 21:40 the word on the street
> was...
>
> > But the outcome would be the same. A player will know that he usually
> > needs to roll 2 succeses, and suddenly he doesn't succede with even 3
> > successes. The player will know something is up, eve though the
> > character wouldn't know.
>
> True, and I think I mentioned this kind of thing in the post you replied
> to. It's something that TN adjustment gets around nicely, most of the
> time, but which SR4 is probably going to be a bit more problematic with
> -- at least for GMs like me who prefer to keep this kind of info secret.
> Then again, there's always the GM screen to roll dice behind. A few
> years ago I used to roll PCs' Perception tests behind the screen, for
> example, so they wouldn't know anything just by looking at the dice.

Hmm... In the case of perception tests I would continue to roll for
the players. In the case of something like a spirit power which
decreases the character's chances of success, I might roll it as an
opposed test vs each of the PC's rolls (behind the GM screen) while
the power was in effect, with each success of the power countering a
success of the PC's (so if the PC rolls 4 success and the spirit rolls
1 success, the PC ends up with a total of 3 successes). The player
would still know something was up, but he wouldn't know how powerful
it actually is (as opposed to telling him to roll 2 less dice on
successes).

--
-Graht

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 08:44:08 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 39 > I find that what players want to know is "what's going on here."
> No.
> They won't sit and read a book and learn it, because that's really
> no
> way to learn. The best way is to sit down and play, and go over
> each
> system slowly. Will they memorize it all? Nope. Will they remember
> it
> when prodded, and know where in the books to look? Yes. Personally,
> I
> play most of my shadowrun online, which means I'm typically dealing
> with a different set of characters almost every time. There will
> always be people who don't know the system, as long as there are
> GMs
> who expect them to learn it on their own time. Personally? I use a
> system whereby the wound, environmental and external modifiers for
> each person are on display (with the reasoning "unknown modifier",
> if
> they haven't figured it out ICly.) and then I tell the player to
> declare their dice, apply their own TN mods, and roll. If they
> forget
> something, it's typically to their own detriment.
>
> This can be easily done with two sets of colored markers at the
> gaming
> table, and makes learning rules much simpler. A player's ignorance
> can
> be cured, but only if they are allowed to help implement the rules.
> No
> one ever mastered anything without practical application. I think
> you
> give your players too little credit.

Ahhh, I think I did convery the full reason for my frustration with
players in this regard. For a couple of years I had a wall mounted
dry erase board the size of a classroom chalkboard. Most of one
wall. In addition to tactical maps, I wrote out clearly such things
as condition monitors, initiative scores, TN mods... anything that
would help the players learn the system. Furthermore, about 2 or 3
times a year I run a 'combat night'. The players are handed
pregenerated characters and scenarios. Play for the evening revolves
around tactical combat using the SR game setting. These nights are
loaded with exploration of the various SR mechanics. Many of my
combat-relevant house rules came out of these 6 to 8 hour sessions.

So, I disagree that I am giving my players too little credit. If
players are handed rule books with the combat section bookmarked,
handed typed up summaries of the most relevant combat rules, and run
through the various mechanics in detail at least twice a campaign,
they have some obligation IMO to get past a question like "how many
times can I shoot that guy this Turn?" Yet some of my longest
running gamers ask precisely such stupid questions. Raw newbies tend
to take a different approach. They are usually the ones who say
something like "I want to duck behind something, poke my head up, and
shoot the guy with the Uzi." And then patiently wait for me to tell
them what they can and can't do, what to roll, etc. They are the
ones I will gladly help out. Show them rules, explain why such and
such happened, and so on. If you've been at my gaming table through
two dozen shadowrun combats, and you ask me yet again how to figure
out your initiative, I start getting a bit annoyed. I had someone in
my last SR game who, after 11 months of gaming nearly every Saturday
night, still had to ask every time how to figure their initiative.
Never mind that their character sheet has a place that says
"Reaction" with a number next to it, a place on the same row that
says "Initiatve Dice" with an XD6 notation next to it, and a note at
the end of that row that says "Initiative = Reaction + Initiative
Dice". This row is right under the section on Attributes. Hard to
miss. You'd think.

I even create helpful NPCs, present for the sole purpose of showing
the players their options. These NPCs use the various Actions and
options to maximize their tactical advantage. Early in the campaign,
I reveal every nuance of what that NPC is doing. To typcially blank
or impatient stares.

No, I have been more than patient in trying to get my players to
understand and use SR mechanics. These days I just tell them what to
roll and make them give me the results of the roll on a post-it note.
Trust me, it saves time. :/

======Korishinzo
--I've earned my cynicism :)

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From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 08:54:58 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 40 > > In any case I still think a fixed T# is one of the bad things
> > from SR4.

> It does speed up a play a lot, though. Instead of:
>
> "What were your rolls?"
> "1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7 and 13."
> "Okay, wait a sec while I figure out how many successes you
> have against a TN I'm not going to tell you..."
> *brain noises*
> "Okay, such and such happens."
>
> you have:
>
> "How many hits did you roll?"
> "Two."
> "This and that happens."

Ahhh, the wonders of a scratch pad. Players are issued little note
pads, usually Post-It. Once we figure out what they are rolling, and
while I am working with the next person in turn, they roll and write
their "1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7 and 13" on the note pad. Then they toss
it to me, and I compare it to the TN I've already figured out, back
while I was reminding them that they roll the SMG active skill when
shooting an SMG. I toss it back and tell them what happens. Simple
and functional. We typically go through a couple of dozen pads of
Post-Its in a campaign, but they are cheap so it is feasible to do.
I am eagerly awaiting the day all of them have laptops they can
bring. Replacing Post-Its with some flavor of IM client will be
nice. :)

======Korishinzo
--making 3M richer one scratch pad at a time

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From:	bullcon@*****.com (Bull)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 12:10:10 -0400

Message no. 41 One thing about this, whether you give your players TN's or not, is
that it's much easier to figure out the "odds of Success" without
beinga math major. I was an English Major for a reason, and couldn;t
tell you the odds of rolling anything in the old game.

However, with a Fixed TN of 5, it makes it a LOT easier now to figure
these things out. And you can both adjust the threshhold as well as
imposing Penalties/Bonuses to Dice Pools in SR4, allowing you to
tailor the odds of success a couple ways.

<shrug> I liked the old system a lot. I like the new system a lot.

Bull

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 09:21:26 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 42 --- Bull <bullcon@*****.com> wrote:

> One thing about this, whether you give your players TN's or not, is
> that it's much easier to figure out the "odds of Success" without
> beinga math major. I was an English Major for a reason, and
> couldn;t tell you the odds of rolling anything in the old game.

1 in 6 :p

(disclaimer: not responsible for injuries caused by the incalculable
odds of rolling anything over a 7...) *grin*

> However, with a Fixed TN of 5, it makes it a LOT easier now to
> figure these things out. And you can both adjust the threshhold as
> well as imposing Penalties/Bonuses to Dice Pools in SR4, allowing
> you to tailor the odds of success a couple ways.

Yes. This system has a much more straight forward scaling of odds.
Part of its weakness, IMO. :)

> <shrug> I liked the old system a lot. I like the new system a
> lot.

Let's all play 1st Ed. again. *ducks* ;>

======Korishinzo
--personally loves telling someone they have a 1-in-6 chance of
rolling a 7... they look so lost... *evil grin*

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From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 18:35:09 +0200

Message no. 43 According to Ice Heart, on 27-7-05 17:54 the word on the street was...

> Ahhh, the wonders of a scratch pad.

You've mentioned this method before, and I can't say I like the sound of
it -- that's to say, it probably works fine in your group, but I
wouldn't want it in mine :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 18:41:00 +0200

Message no. 44 According to Bull, on 27-7-05 18:10 the word on the street was...

> One thing about this, whether you give your players TN's or not, is
> that it's much easier to figure out the "odds of Success" without
> beinga math major. I was an English Major for a reason, and couldn;t
> tell you the odds of rolling anything in the old game.

I can't say I ever really cared about the odds in SR's system. After 13
years, you kind of develop a feel for what number of dice and what TN is
going to give which results :)

> However, with a Fixed TN of 5, it makes it a LOT easier now to figure
> these things out.

My point exactly. And not just for the GM -- the system is easier to
pick up for new players than the old one was. At least, this is going by
comments in my group from players who had never really read up on the
SR3 rules (they know the basics but that's about it).

> <shrug> I liked the old system a lot. I like the new system a lot.

Both have their good and their bad points. IMHO the good/bad balance of
the new system is about the same as with the old -- there are some
things I don't like, but that gets compensated by there being other
things that I do like, and didn't like the equivalent SR3 rules for
(still with me? :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
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GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	davek@***.lonestar.org (David Kettler)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:16:58 +0000

Message no. 45 On Wed, Jul 27, 2005 at 06:41:00PM +0200, Gurth wrote:
> I can't say I ever really cared about the odds in SR's system. After 13
> years, you kind of develop a feel for what number of dice and what TN is
> going to give which results :)
>

Guess I'm the only one who wrote a computer program to calculate the odds
and then made a 3D plot of success probability vs. TN and number of dice
being rolled, huh? ;)

BTW, while calculating the odds in the new system may be a big harder, it's
still not completely trivial. You need to calculate binomial coefficients
to do it right.

--
Dave Kettler
davek@***.lonestar.org
http://davek.freeshell.org/
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 19:24:14 +0200

Message no. 46 According to David Kettler, on 27-7-05 19:16 the word on the street was...

> Guess I'm the only one who wrote a computer program to calculate the odds
> and then made a 3D plot of success probability vs. TN and number of dice
> being rolled, huh? ;)

Quite probably, yes :) I do remember downloading a dice vs. TN
probability chart about a decade ago and having it with my GM screen for
a while, but I never found any real use for it :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 10:48:07 -0700 (PDT)

Message no. 47 > > I can't say I ever really cared about the odds in SR's system.
> > After 13 years, you kind of develop a feel for what number of
> > dice and what TN is going to give which results :)

> Guess I'm the only one who wrote a computer program to calculate
> the odds and then made a 3D plot of success probability vs. TN and
> number of dice being rolled, huh? ;)

Except for the 3D plot part, we did something like that. Ran
probability charts for 1-25 dice at TN's of 2-26. Rolling a 26 on 1
die is not going to happen very often. Then again, rolling a 26 on
25 dice didn't happen often either. :)

======Korishinzo
--I'm with Gurth, never cared about the odds much... intuition served
me well enough

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From:	weberm@*******.net (Michael Weber)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 13:53:59 -0400

Message no. 48 Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
>According to David Kettler, on 27-7-05 19:16 the word on the street was...

>> Guess I'm the only one who wrote a computer program to calculate the odds
>> and then made a 3D plot of success probability vs. TN and number of dice
>> being rolled, huh? ;)
>
>Quite probably, yes :) I do remember downloading a dice vs. TN
>probability chart about a decade ago and having it with my GM screen for
>a while, but I never found any real use for it :)

I still have mine in a folder somewhere. Nyah!

From:	l-hansen@*****.tele.dk (Lars Wagner Hansen)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:56:20 +0200

Message no. 49 From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
> According to Bull, on 27-7-05 18:10 the word on the street was...
>
>> <shrug> I liked the old system a lot. I like the new system a lot.
>
> Both have their good and their bad points. IMHO the good/bad balance of
> the new system is about the same as with the old -- there are some things
> I don't like, but that gets compensated by there being other things that I
> do like, and didn't like the equivalent SR3 rules for (still with me? :)

How do you know? Have you signed the NDA, or has somebody else broken
theirs?

Lars

From:	l-hansen@*****.tele.dk (Lars Wagner Hansen)
Subject:	SR4 Conversion
Date:	Wed, 27 Jul 2005 23:56:52 +0200

Message no. 50 From: "Bull" <bullcon@*****.com>
><shrug> I liked the old system a lot. I like the new system a lot.

At least you are in a position to say that.

Lars

Message no. 51 Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote on Tue, 26 Jul 2005 19:51:05 +0200

>> Personally, I'm excited about the change. Adding/subtracting dice is
>> easier and more managable than altering TNs. Lose a die, and I have
>> one less chance for success. Raise the TN, and my chance of success on
>> every die is lessened.
>
>
> There is a problem with adjusting dice, though. At times, things will
> be obvious to the players that they should not know about -- by
> changing the TN, the GM can account for these without informing the
> players, but it's a bit difficult to secretly remove some of their
> dice :(

Another option: just have your players roll multi-colored dice. I know
I have red, green and white d6s readily available. If I had every
player roll 1 green, 2 red, and the rest white, then I can just mentally
subtract the green sucesses (-1 pool), red (-2 pool) or green and red
(-3 pool). I don't know if I'd bother with my players though. Over
half know the rules nearly as well as me (or more often better than me
in a given "area of interest"), and they would almost certainly pick up
on a failure where some green or red successes were rolled but no white
ones (in the previous colour scheme). Still, might be a neat idea on
some runs for suspense, especially if they know ahead of time that
something might happen... They'd be clever enough in their speculation
that I wouldn't even have to create one, I could just feed back their
paranoid delusions to them ;->

-Tev

Message no. 52 > Another option: just have your players roll multi-colored dice. I
> know
> I have red, green and white d6s readily available. If I had every
> player roll 1 green, 2 red, and the rest white, then I can just
> mentally
> subtract the green sucesses (-1 pool), red (-2 pool) or green and
> red
> (-3 pool).

Uh, no. I am sorry but this seems horribly unfair to me. Just as I
don't like the idea of taking dice from a player before they roll, I
don't like the idea of letting them roll dice that don't matter.
That seems far more cruel than simply keeping the target number
secret.

======Korishinzo
--IMO of course

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Message no. 53 Ice Heart wrote:
> > > In any case I still think a fixed T# is one of the bad things
> > > from SR4.
>
> > It does speed up a play a lot, though. Instead of:
> >
> > "What were your rolls?"
> > "1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7 and 13."
> > "Okay, wait a sec while I figure out how many successes you
> > have against a TN I'm not going to tell you..."
> > *brain noises*
> > "Okay, such and such happens."
> >
> > you have:
> >
> > "How many hits did you roll?"
> > "Two."
> > "This and that happens."
>
> Ahhh, the wonders of a scratch pad. Players are issued little note
> pads, usually Post-It. Once we figure out what they are rolling, and
> while I am working with the next person in turn, they roll and write
> their "1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7 and 13" on the note pad. Then they toss
> it to me, and I compare it to the TN I've already figured out, back
> while I was reminding them that they roll the SMG active skill when
> shooting an SMG.

So how do you handle Karma Pool rerolls?

In the example above, say you had determined the TN was 5, and the
player wants to really put his target down so wants to reroll looking
for extra successes... do you tell them to reroll everything under 5? or
juast say roll 4 dice? Do they still have their dice laid as they rolled
so they can see what they already had, or do you hand back the
post-it... what if you hand back the wrong post-it...

Doesnt it get confusing if you are in the middle of dealing with people
acting on a later initiative number already, especially if the karma
reroll puts down a target that the later guy was going to shoot at to
finish them off, but if the target was already down they'd have shoot at
a different threat?

Far simpler to just say to the first player his TN in the first place so
he can roll, do any rerolls he wants and then just tell you how many
total successes he got.

Frankly you seem to be playing with players who seem to have the mental
ability of 6 year olds (or at least that is the level you seem to credit
them with...) if they can't even figure how many dice they get to roll
and can't simply compare their rolls against a single target number and
say how many die rolls beat it...

I get the feeling that if I ever played with you as the GM it would only
be for one session... you seem far to much of a control freak for my
taste.

Matt

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Message no. 54 Matthew Bond wrote:
#
#So how do you handle Karma Pool rerolls?
#
#In the example above, say you had determined the TN was 5, and
#the player wants to really put his target down so wants to
#reroll looking for extra successes... do you tell them to
#reroll everything under 5? or juast say roll 4 dice? Do they
#still have their dice laid as they rolled so they can see what
#they already had, or do you hand back the post-it... what if
#you hand back the wrong post-it...
#
#Doesnt it get confusing if you are in the middle of dealing
#with people acting on a later initiative number already,
#especially if the karma reroll puts down a target that the
#later guy was going to shoot at to finish them off, but if the
#target was already down they'd have shoot at a different threat?
#
#Far simpler to just say to the first player his TN in the
#first place so he can roll, do any rerolls he wants and then
#just tell you how many total successes he got.
#
#Frankly you seem to be playing with players who seem to have
#the mental ability of 6 year olds (or at least that is the
#level you seem to credit them with...) if they can't even
#figure how many dice they get to roll and can't simply compare
#their rolls against a single target number and say how many
#die rolls beat it...
#
#I get the feeling that if I ever played with you as the GM it
#would only be for one session... you seem far to much of a
#control freak for my taste.
#
#Matt
#

I'm going to weigh in here. I do the same as Kori, ie, I don't tell my
players their target number until the dice have stopped rolling. At that
point, they will pull their hands away so everyone, including myself, can
see the results. If they need to reroll sixes, I tell them to. I'll tell
them what the TN is at this point, too, and they can make the choice to
reroll for karma or not.

It doesn't help or hinder to not know the target number. Actually, it's more
reflective of real life, since you don't always *know* you're going to
succeed (and sometimes, knowing the target number is enough to have someone
say "nah, I don't think I'll do that").

Zebulin

AIM: zebulingod
ICQ: 21932827
WEB: http://www.zebulin.com/
MSN: zebulingod
YIM: zebulingod
SRGC: SR1 SR2++ SR3+++ h+ b+++ !B UB IE+
RN+ STK++ W- dk+ ri++ m-(d++) gm++ M- P++

Message no. 55 On 7/27/05, Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
> According to Bull, on 27-7-05 18:10 the word on the street was...
>
> > One thing about this, whether you give your players TN's or not, is
> > that it's much easier to figure out the "odds of Success" without
> > beinga math major. I was an English Major for a reason, and couldn;t
> > tell you the odds of rolling anything in the old game.
>
> I can't say I ever really cared about the odds in SR's system. After 13
> years, you kind of develop a feel for what number of dice and what TN is
> going to give which results :)
>
Yeah, same here. I'm real good at faking it... Just saying that for
newer players and GMs, it's royal PITA. :)

Bull

Message no. 56 On 7/27/05, Lars Wagner Hansen <l-hansen@*****.tele.dk> wrote:
> > How do you know? Have you signed the NDA, or has somebody else broken
> theirs?
>
> Lars

I think Gurth, like me, was one of the playtesters? Not positive...

I also know I ran demos at Origins, and I started up a new SR4
campaign here at home a few weeks early :)

I really wish I was in a position to answer more questions. I can
give you my opnions, and hope that helps until more information can be
freely discussed.

Bull

Message no. 57 Zebulin wrote:
> I'm going to weigh in here. I do the same as Kori, ie, I don't tell my
> players their target number until the dice have stopped rolling. At
> that point, they will pull their hands away so everyone, including
> myself, can see the results. If they need to reroll sixes, I tell
> them to. I'll tell them what the TN is at this point, too, and they
> can make the choice to reroll for karma or not.
>
> It doesn't help or hinder to not know the target number. Actually,
> it's more reflective of real life, since you don't always *know*
> you're going to succeed (and sometimes, knowing the target number is
> enough to have someone say "nah, I don't think I'll do that").

That's fair enough, my GM often doesn't tell us the TN (especially if it
would be difficult to evaluate independently, e.g. a casting a spell on
an unwilling target... until you cast you don't know their willpower),
but for general combat most participants should be able to have a
general idea of how hard a shot is. You know the rough range, the
light/weather conditions, the cover you and your target are taking,
whether anyone is moving, yiour cyber/sighting mods, recoil, your wounds
etc a reasonably skilled shooter (or halfway competent player...) should
be able to work out the TN instinctively and know whther they are on a
hiding to nothing. Most of our group can work out the TN in a second or
two, especially in an ongoing firefight as generally only cover and
wounds change from shot to shot.

In anycase, rolling your dice while the GM is looking at you, having him
then tell you what your target number is (usually by saying "how many
x's", where x is the TN) then asking if you are spending Karma, and
doing any rerolls, then determining the final outcome of the total
successes is straightforward and takes about 10 seconds to resolve. The
GM then moves onto the next combatant in initiative order (PC or NPC as
the case may be).

But requiring players to scrabble around for not only their dice from
their dice box, but pencils that have fallen on the floor, post-its that
have become hidden under a charactersheet or a pizza box etc, write
stuff down, hand it over then come back to them if the want to reroll
etc, all the while while dealing with other characters doing the same
rigmarole acting later in the initiative order seems a recipe for
disaster... either that or you need well-disciplined players and given
they apparently are incapable of learning what dice they can roll they
don't smack of well-disciplined players...

Maybe I'm wrong and we are missing out on the nirvana of gaming styles,
but it just smacks of a control freak GM and players who have given up
bothering to learn they system as the GM either forcefeeds them, berates
their ability, or likes to throw in mysterious modifiers so as to make
any attempt to discern the 'true' TN unfathomable. (Ok, I may be wrong
on that last one, but it only takes a couple of sessions of
transparently working out TN's for common situations for players to
grasp the modifiers and work it out for themselves in my experience)

Matt

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Message no. 58 On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 05:02:03AM +0100, Matthew Bond wrote:
>
> I get the feeling that if I ever played with you as the GM it would only
> be for one session... you seem far to much of a control freak for my
> taste.
>

For what it's worth I think I would love to play in Kori's group. I've been reading his
posts to this list for a long time now and he seems to run a pretty tight ship (at least
that's the impression I get). You may not always agree with his system, but he definitely
has a system, which is a whole lot better than a lot of GMs.

In any case, on this particular topic it seems perfectly reasonable for the GM to not tell
the players the TN. You do not always know the exact odds of doing something in real
life, so why should your player? Yes, experienced players will often be able to guess at
the TN, but that's never the same as knowing it for sure. And there is always the issue
of TN mods the players aren't supposed to know about...

--
Dave Kettler
davek@***.lonestar.org
http://davek.freeshell.org/
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

Message no. 59 According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on 27-7-05 23:56 the word on the street
was...

>> Both have their good and their bad points. IMHO the good/bad balance
>> of the new system is about the same as with the old -- there are some
>> things I don't like, but that gets compensated by there being other
>> things that I do like, and didn't like the equivalent SR3 rules for
>> (still with me? :)
>
> How do you know? Have you signed the NDA, or has somebody else broken
> theirs?

Would I say something like the above if I hadn't played it? :) Yes, like
several others on the list, I've read several drafts of the rules in
order to playtest them.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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Message no. 60 According to Tevel Drinkwater, on 28-7-05 02:26 the word on the street
was...

> Another option: just have your players roll multi-colored dice. I know
> I have red, green and white d6s readily available. If I had every
> player roll 1 green, 2 red, and the rest white, then I can just mentally
> subtract the green sucesses (-1 pool), red (-2 pool) or green and red
> (-3 pool).

This could work, but I can see another problem, namely that this will
require more mental effort on the GM's part, probably slowing things
down a bit again :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
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GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Message no. 61 According to Bull, on 28-7-05 06:35 the word on the street was...

>>I can't say I ever really cared about the odds in SR's system. After 13
>>years, you kind of develop a feel for what number of dice and what TN is
>>going to give which results :)
>
> Yeah, same here. I'm real good at faking it...

Half the time I don't even bother with a solid TN, especially if it's in
cases where there's no easy number to use. With things like opposed
tests, combat, magic or decking, it's easy because the TN is quick to
find. But for stuff like Perception tests, often I'll just have the
player roll the dice and if I like the roll, I'll tell them what they see.

> Just saying that for
> newer players and GMs, it's royal PITA. :)

They'll learn :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Message no. 62 On 7/28/05, Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
>> > Just saying that for
> > newer players and GMs, it's royal PITA. :)
>
> They'll learn :)
>
I was referring to the old system, and giving one of my reasons for
the newer system.

Of course, making it simpler and more streamlined and easier to use
has also led for some to make the claim that we're "pandering to
little kids to stupid to learn the rules", which is always fun...

At this point, I'm just damn eager for the game to come out so we can move on :)

Bull

Message no. 63 On 28-Jul-05, at 4:04 AM, Bull wrote:

> At this point, I'm just damn eager for the game to come out so we can
> move on :)

*looks at his list of hours for this week*

You think you're eager?

Adam

Message no. 64 According to Bull, on 28-7-05 12:04 the word on the street was...

>>They'll learn :)
>
> I was referring to the old system

Me too :) That does make me wonder, BTW, how many people will be picking
up SR3 right now, unaware that SR4 is going to come out. Probably not
many, but I thought of it because I bought SR1 in August 1992, probably
even after SRII had been released -- but how was I supposed to know that? :)

> At this point, I'm just damn eager for the game to come out so we can move on :)

Going by the SR4 discussions so far, I'm half dreading the threads we'll
have in the near future ;)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
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GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Message no. 65 On 7/28/05, Adam Jury <adamj@*********.com> wrote:
>
> On 28-Jul-05, at 4:04 AM, Bull wrote:
>
> > At this point, I'm just damn eager for the game to come out so we can
> > move on :)
>
> *looks at his list of hours for this week*
>
> You think you're eager?
>
*gives Adam a candy bar*

You... You've earned it. :)

Bull

Message no. 66 On 28-Jul-05, at 7:01 AM, Bull wrote:

> *gives Adam a candy bar*
>
> You... You've earned it. :)

Your generosity overwhelms me. ;)

Adam

Message no. 67 On 7/28/05, Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
> > Me too :) That does make me wonder, BTW, how many people will be picking
> up SR3 right now, unaware that SR4 is going to come out. Probably not
> many, but I thought of it because I bought SR1 in August 1992, probably
> even after SRII had been released -- but how was I supposed to know that? :)
>
Good question. Porbably a few, but shouldn;t be too bad. In this day
and age, hopefully the majority of folks interested in a new RPG will
check online or ask around. I know there's been a little advertising
for SR4, but I wonder how many FLGS actually know about this. Too
many seem pathetically ignorant about their stock.

> > At this point, I'm just damn eager for the game to come out so we can move on :)
>
> Going by the SR4 discussions so far, I'm half dreading the threads we'll
> have in the near future ;)
>
Well do I remember SR3 and the complaints, questions, etc. that it
caused. And SR4 will be far, far more dramatic, considering the
change to the entire system.

But you know what? I've been watching bitching, whining, complaining,
and all the rest for months now (mainly on the Forums), and I've been
unable to do much more than say "uhh, give it a chance. It doesn't
suck. no, I can't tell you why. just STFU and be patient!" At least
once the book comes out, the folks not happy with it will actually
have something concrete to complain about, and I'll be at liberty to
actually discuss the game.

Ahh well...

Bull

Message no. 68 On Jul 27, 2005, at 13:16, David Kettler wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 27, 2005 at 06:41:00PM +0200, Gurth wrote:
>> I can't say I ever really cared about the odds in SR's system. After
>> 13
>> years, you kind of develop a feel for what number of dice and what TN
>> is
>> going to give which results :)
>>
>
> Guess I'm the only one who wrote a computer program to calculate the
> odds
> and then made a 3D plot of success probability vs. TN and number of
> dice
> being rolled, huh? ;)
>
> BTW, while calculating the odds in the new system may be a big harder,
> it's
> still not completely trivial. You need to calculate binomial
> coefficients
> to do it right.
>
I am sure I will come out with some silly program that will calculate
odds for people once I know what the new system is. And I will
probably make comparisons to the old system. And I will probably
augment the SRDiceRoller to handle SR4, or perhaps just come out with
an SR4 version that differs from the SR3 version and label them. I
just need to wait to get my hands on the rules since no one thought to
send me a set before it is officially released. How is a programmer to
program these things without the rules? :-)

--
Scott Harrison

Message no. 69 Tevel Drinkwater wrote:

> Another option: just have your players roll multi-colored dice. I
> know I have red, green and white d6s readily available. If I had
> every player roll 1 green, 2 red, and the rest white, then I can just
> mentally subtract the green sucesses (-1 pool), red (-2 pool) or green
> and red
> (-3 pool).

I do something similar to this already. White dice and black pips are skill
dice. Red dice with black pips are pool dice. Green dice with white pips are
karma dice. It's very clear, then, if someone succeeds based on their skill
or not, if the only successes they got were pool.

Zebulin

AIM: zebulingod
ICQ: 21932827
WEB: http://www.zebulin.com/
MSN: zebulingod
YIM: zebulingod
SRGC: SR1 SR2++ SR3+++ h+ b+++ !B UB IE+
RN+ STK++ W- dk+ ri++ m-(d++) gm++ M- P++

Message no. 70 On Jul 28, 2005, at 10:35, Zebulin wrote:

> Tevel Drinkwater wrote:
>
>> Another option: just have your players roll multi-colored dice. I
>> know I have red, green and white d6s readily available. If I had
>> every player roll 1 green, 2 red, and the rest white, then I can just
>> mentally subtract the green sucesses (-1 pool), red (-2 pool) or green
>> and red
>> (-3 pool).
>
> I do something similar to this already. White dice and black pips are
> skill
> dice. Red dice with black pips are pool dice. Green dice with white
> pips are
> karma dice. It's very clear, then, if someone succeeds based on their
> skill
> or not, if the only successes they got were pool.
>
We do something very similar with the SRDiceRoller program because
each die roll indicates which dice are pool dice. The dice are all
ordered, and it is easy to know how many successes there are -- even if
the GM is slow at giving the TN to you. And when you reroll dice it
will indicate which ones were rerolled and how many times. :-)

There has been rumor that the author of this program will be modifying
it to allow it to hook up with other versions of itself on a network so
the GM can request rolls from characters, pool together initiative
rolls, etc. Are there any interested in such types of networked
functionality?

--
Scott Harrison

Message no. 71 > According to Bull, on 28-7-05 12:04 the word on the street was...
>
> >>They'll learn :)
> >
> > I was referring to the old system
>
> Me too :) That does make me wonder, BTW, how many people will
> be picking up SR3 right now, unaware that SR4 is going to
> come out. Probably not many, but I thought of it because I
> bought SR1 in August 1992, probably even after SRII had been
> released -- but how was I supposed to know that? :)
>
>
> --
> Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html

I've made sure to let my FLGS know, and I've posted on the various FAQ's
locations and contents to a couple of roleplaying related forums I
frequent. And I do have some friends that I could never get interested
in SR interested because I told them that the system is being revamped
and streamlined.

Paul "Yes that Paul" Grosse
PCGen BoD OGL Silverback, Data Lemur & Tracker Lemur
ICQ: 14397299
AO: Nylan
Various forums: Nylan (or Nylanfs)

"I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks"

Message no. 72 According to Scott Harrison, on 28-7-05 16:20 the word on the street was...

> I am sure I will come out with some silly program that will
> calculate odds for people once I know what the new system is.

That information is already available: roll your dice, and all 5s and 6s
are successes. All you need to do a diceroller is to have it ask for the
number of dice, and do that many random() calls.

In fact, I have a half-finished Dashboard widget that does just that,
but it needs a lot more work (or possibly a complete restart, because
it's a bit of a mess :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Message no. 73 According to Bull, on 28-7-05 15:08 the word on the street was...

> Good question. Porbably a few, but shouldn;t be too bad. In this day
> and age, hopefully the majority of folks interested in a new RPG will
> check online or ask around.

That's what I figure, too. Back when I got interested in SR, I didn't
even know what the Internet was (that came about a year and a half
later), and so the first I heard of SRII was when I ran into Tom Dowd
demo'ing it at a Dutch con in spring '93. I still kick myself for not
asking him to sign the SRII hardcover I bought there :)

> But you know what? I've been watching bitching, whining, complaining,
> and all the rest for months now (mainly on the Forums), and I've been
> unable to do much more than say "uhh, give it a chance. It doesn't
> suck. no, I can't tell you why. just STFU and be patient!"

I know exactly what you mean, and I'm nowhere near as deep in all this
as some people here :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Message no. 74 On Jul 28, 2005, at 11:39, Gurth wrote:

> According to Scott Harrison, on 28-7-05 16:20 the word on the street
> was...
>
>> I am sure I will come out with some silly program that will
>> calculate odds for people once I know what the new system is.
>
> That information is already available: roll your dice, and all 5s and
> 6s are successes. All you need to do a diceroller is to have it ask
> for the number of dice, and do that many random() calls.

Actually, the concept of rolling against a TN of 5 is not a problem.
The problem is no one has explained how things work well enough for a
program to be written. I have looked at the FAQs and read the postings
on this list (not on any forum though), and have determined I need a
set of rules because there are so many questions. Coming up with a
table that shows 33% success for 1 die, etc. is pretty easy. But it
does not reflect anything in the game system. So I just wait, and when
I come up with the code hopefully you can once again provide the Dutch
localization. :-)

> In fact, I have a half-finished Dashboard widget that does just that,
> but it needs a lot more work (or possibly a complete restart, because
> it's a bit of a mess :)
>
Don't you just hate those half-finished projects? I have three
versions of the frameworks for an SR character generator --
Objective-C, Java and then back to Objective-C again. Pain in the butt
it is. I will most likely do the one for SR3 first and then worry
about one for SR4 later (since I do not envision playing that myself
for a while if at all). I'll let you handle the Dashboard widgets
since we do not want everyone doing the same thing. :-)

--
Scott Harrison

Message no. 75 > -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Harrison [mailto:scott@**********.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 02:41 PM
> We do something very similar with the SRDiceRoller program because
> each die roll indicates which dice are pool dice. The dice are all
> ordered, and it is easy to know how many successes there are -- even if
> the GM is slow at giving the TN to you. And when you reroll dice it
> will indicate which ones were rerolled and how many times. :-)
>
> There has been rumor that the author of this program will be modifying
> it to allow it to hook up with other versions of itself on a network so
> the GM can request rolls from characters, pool together initiative
> rolls, etc. Are there any interested in such types of networked
> functionality?

How accessible is this to handhelds? One or two of my players have those.

Snicker

Message no. 76 On Jul 28, 2005, at 13:03, snicker@*********.net wrote:

>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Scott Harrison [mailto:scott@**********.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 02:41 PM
>> We do something very similar with the SRDiceRoller program because
>> each die roll indicates which dice are pool dice. The dice are all
>> ordered, and it is easy to know how many successes there are -- even
>> if
>> the GM is slow at giving the TN to you. And when you reroll dice it
>> will indicate which ones were rerolled and how many times. :-)
>>
>> There has been rumor that the author of this program will be
>> modifying
>> it to allow it to hook up with other versions of itself on a network
>> so
>> the GM can request rolls from characters, pool together initiative
>> rolls, etc. Are there any interested in such types of networked
>> functionality?
>
> How accessible is this to handhelds? One or two of my players have
> those.
>
Sorry, Mac OS X only.

--
Scott Harrison

Message no. 77 > -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Harrison [mailto:scott@**********.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 05:12 PM
> To: 'Shadowrun Discussion'
> Subject: Re: SR4 Conversion
>
>
> On Jul 28, 2005, at 13:03, snicker@*********.net wrote:
>
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Scott Harrison [mailto:scott@**********.com]
> >> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 02:41 PM
> >> We do something very similar with the SRDiceRoller program because
> >> each die roll indicates which dice are pool dice. The dice are all
> >> ordered, and it is easy to know how many successes there are -- even
> >> if
> >> the GM is slow at giving the TN to you. And when you reroll dice it
> >> will indicate which ones were rerolled and how many times. :-)
> >>
> >> There has been rumor that the author of this program will be
> >> modifying
> >> it to allow it to hook up with other versions of itself on a network
> >> so
> >> the GM can request rolls from characters, pool together initiative
> >> rolls, etc. Are there any interested in such types of networked
> >> functionality?
> >
> > How accessible is this to handhelds? One or two of my players have
> > those.
> >
> Sorry, Mac OS X only.
>

Gah! It burnnssss us, it does....

;)

Fortunately, one of my players has a mac, too, so I'll have her evaluate it.

Snicker

Message no. 78 On Jul 28, 2005, at 13:15, snicker@*********.net wrote:

>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Scott Harrison [mailto:scott@**********.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 05:12 PM
>> To: 'Shadowrun Discussion'
>> Subject: Re: SR4 Conversion
>>
>>
>> On Jul 28, 2005, at 13:03, snicker@*********.net wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Scott Harrison [mailto:scott@**********.com]
>>>> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 02:41 PM
>>>> We do something very similar with the SRDiceRoller program because
>>>> each die roll indicates which dice are pool dice. The dice are all
>>>> ordered, and it is easy to know how many successes there are -- even
>>>> if
>>>> the GM is slow at giving the TN to you. And when you reroll dice it
>>>> will indicate which ones were rerolled and how many times. :-)
>>>>
>>>> There has been rumor that the author of this program will be
>>>> modifying
>>>> it to allow it to hook up with other versions of itself on a network
>>>> so
>>>> the GM can request rolls from characters, pool together initiative
>>>> rolls, etc. Are there any interested in such types of networked
>>>> functionality?
>>>
>>> How accessible is this to handhelds? One or two of my players have
>>> those.
>>>
>> Sorry, Mac OS X only.
>>
>
> Gah! It burnnssss us, it does....
>
> ;)
>
> Fortunately, one of my players has a mac, too, so I'll have her
> evaluate it.
>
You can download it from my website to see its current functionality.
(It comes in English, French and Dutch -- and if you have anyone that
can help localize in other languages I would be willing to help them do
it and give them credit :-).) Please send suggestions. Of course
networking stuff really only works if you have more than one Mac. :-)

--
Scott Harrison

Message no. 79 > So how do you handle Karma Pool rerolls?

A star or asterisk on the note indicates that they are worried enough
about the difficulty to spend karma if necessary. I simply put a
line through any number that is not a success and toss the notepadd
back. They either reroll and edit the note, or keep the notepad and
the roll as is. Note a huge complication, and has served us quite
well.

> In the example above, say you had determined the TN was 5, and the
> player wants to really put his target down so wants to reroll
> looking for extra successes... do you tell them to reroll
> everything under 5? or juast say roll 4 dice? Do they still have
> their dice laid as they rolled so they can see what they already
> had, or do you hand back the post-it... what if you hand back the
> wrong post-it...

Well, since they are tossing me a Post-It pad, I'm looking at it, and
tossing it back, the chances of tossing them the wrong one are
limited. I've never done it.

> Doesnt it get confusing if you are in the middle of dealing with
> people acting on a later initiative number already, especially if
> the karma reroll puts down a target that the later guy was going to
> shoot at to finish them off, but if the target was already down
> they'd have shoot at a different threat?

Emphatically no. If an average action pass in SR combat is 1 to 1.5
seconds long, confusion is not just possible, but a near surety. If
Player A, with an Initiative of 14, shoots at NPC Z; and Player B
decides to do the same on her Initiative of 12, it won't matter if
the first shot was fatal or not. By the time the first bullet has
plowed to a stop in the bad guy's chest the second bullet is probably
already on its way. We are talking about a difference of time on the
order of tenths of seconds between one PC acting and another. It is,
in fact, wholly unrealistic to allow someone to change their declared
target in the space of an action pass.

> Frankly you seem to be playing with players who seem to have the
> mental ability of 6 year olds (or at least that is the level you
> seem to credit them with...) if they can't even figure how many
> dice they get to roll and can't simply compare their rolls against
> a single target number and say how many die rolls beat it...

I would counter by saying they are mentally lazy. They show a
tendency to ask me a question they could answer for themselves with
just a few more seconds of thought. Not always, but definately the
majority of the time. And it is hardly limited to the group I run
games for now. I've seen it happen with group of players for a long
time.

> I get the feeling that if I ever played with you as the GM it would
> only be for one session... you seem far to much of a control freak
> for my taste.

Tsk tsk, so confrontational. :) Control freak is definately a
term that has been applied to me. But, also terms like first rate
story teller, thoroughly consistant adjudicator, and brutally fair GM
get thrown around. Since I routinely have to turn players down
because my table is full, I'll take your criticism with a grain of
salt. Yes, I am control freak. However, the end goal to that trait
is a fast paced, highly immersive, and very dynamic game. If the
players work with me, they end up with game they love and a campaign
they talk about years later. If they don't, well, I basically
bludgeon them until they do. :) It's for their own good, after
all. Once the players are working with me, the rules fade into the
background and the real game begins. The characters and the story
come to the fore. I don't GM to wield power, I GM to tell stories
(the power is just a fringe benefit ;p ). Stories that the
players get to take a direct hand in the outcome of. Once they stop
screwing around, they always enjoy themselves. When is the last time
your group of players got through a meet with Mr. J, a couple days
of legwork, two combat scenarios, and another meet with Mr. J in one
6-hour session?

======Korishinzo
--most sessions at our table, once I get everyone whipped into shape

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

Message no. 80 On 7/27/05, David Kettler <davek@***.lonestar.org> wrote:
>
> Guess I'm the only one who wrote a computer program to calculate the odds
> and then made a 3D plot of success probability vs. TN and number of dice
> being rolled, huh? ;)
>

I recently wrote a Maple script that does that. (with 3D Graphs for
normal, open and opposed tests as well.)
I remember offering the code here in the list but as i lost it in a HD
crash couple days after posting about it, i decided not to offer it
anymore if i ever rewrite the whole thing. (i rewrote the basics of
normal tests, btw)

As i am also a fan of the Middle-Earth PBM, i did the same with the
MEPBM character dueling algorithm, but that time without that many
graphs...

Will
Losing some points in my Frequent Lurker card.

Message no. 81 >From: Scott Harrison
<scott@**********.com> >Reply-To: Shadowrun Discussion
<shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com> >To: Shadowrun Discussion
<shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com> >Subject: Re: SR4
Conversion >Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:12:29
-0400 > > >On Jul 28, 2005, at 13:03,
snicker@*********.net
wrote: > >> >>>-----Original

Message----- >>>From: Scott Harrison
[mailto:scott@**********.com] >>>Sent: Thursday, July 28,
2005
02:41 PM >>> We do something very similar with the
SRDiceRoller
program >>>because >>>each
die roll indicates which
dice are pool dice. The dice are
 >>>all >>>ordered, and it is
easy to know how many
successes there are -- >>>even
if >>>the GM is slow
at giving the TN to you. And when you reroll dice
 >>>it >>>will indicate which
ones were rerolled and
how many times.
:-) >>> >>> There has been
rumor
that the author of this program will be
 >>>modifying >>>it to allow
it to hook up with
other versions of itself on a >>>network
so >>>the
GM can request rolls from characters, pool together
initiative >>>rolls, etc. Are there any interested in such
types of
networked >>>functionality? >> >>How

accessible is this to handhelds? One or two of my players have
 >>those. >> > Sorry, Mac OS
X
only. > >-- >Scott
Harrison > 

Wonder if you can convert this to *nix...

Message no. 82 > For what it's worth I think I would love to play in Kori's group.
> I've been reading his posts to this list for a long time now and he
> seems to run a pretty tight ship (at least that's the impression I
> get). You may not always agree with his system, but he definitely
> has a system, which is a whole lot better than a lot of GMs.

*smiles* Thank you for the vote of confidence. And there is a
standing invite I've posted before. If you find yourself in
Houghton, Michigan, on a weekend ever, you are welcome at my gaming
table. I extend that invite to my critics as well as my fans. And
yes, I do run a tight ship, when it comes to rules and mechanics.
This frees up the group to be flexible when it comes to the part of
the game that really matters. The characters, the story, and the
dynamic nature of the game world.

> In any case, on this particular topic it seems perfectly reasonable
> for the GM to not tell the players the TN. You do not always know
> the exact odds of doing something in real life, so why should your
> player? Yes, experienced players will often be able to guess at
> the TN, but that's never the same as knowing it for sure. And
> there is always the issue of TN mods the players aren't supposed to
> know about...

Sometimes calssified in general terms as the "fog of war"... :)

======Korishinzo
--control freak/GM

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

Message no. 83 On Jul 28, 2005, at 14:13, warlock . wrote:

> SRDiceRoller program

> Wonder if you can convert this to *nix...

Well, Mac OS X is *nix. :-)

However, no it can not be converted since I am using the technology
Apple calls Cocoa. There is a GNU version of the grandfather of Cocoa
called OPENSTEP, but that is very limited compared to modern Cocoa. I
doubt Apple will port Cocoa to anything else since it is the most
powerful development system on the planet, and helps sells their
computers. I also doubt GNU will be able to get OPENSTEP up to the
level of Cocoa any time in the realistic future. And I really do not
want to go back to creating X interfaces.

As a friendly suggestion you may want to go out and pick yourself up a
Mac mini for $500 and a nice KVM switch to hook up to your current
devices. Then you can see what Mac OS X is like compared to Linux,
Solaris, FreeBSD, or whatever you are currently running. Besides
getting all the *nix software to run, and those silly productivity
apps, you would also be able to get some really cool things like
Delicious Library and of course SRDiceRoller. :-)

By the way, the Delicious Monster folks who create Delicious Library
run their business on 2 Mac mini machines. Fun little servers they
seem to make. :-)

--
Scott Harrison

Message no. 84 On Jul 28, 2005, at 14:15, Ice Heart wrote:

>> For what it's worth I think I would love to play in Kori's group.
>> I've been reading his posts to this list for a long time now and he
>> seems to run a pretty tight ship (at least that's the impression I
>> get). You may not always agree with his system, but he definitely
>> has a system, which is a whole lot better than a lot of GMs.
>
> *smiles* Thank you for the vote of confidence. And there is a
> standing invite I've posted before. If you find yourself in
> Houghton, Michigan, on a weekend ever, you are welcome at my gaming
> table. I extend that invite to my critics as well as my fans. And
> yes, I do run a tight ship, when it comes to rules and mechanics.
> This frees up the group to be flexible when it comes to the part of
> the game that really matters. The characters, the story, and the
> dynamic nature of the game world.
>
For the most part from all the posts I have read, I would like to be
able to play in your game. Realistically I do not think I would end up
in Michigan except possibly to fly through Detroit. And I have never
heard of Houghton. The only issue I really had a problem with was that
incident about the rigger and the car that jumped from the road and
crashed into the side of a building. I think a VCR has the ability to
alter the brain's capability to control aspects of the body like
bloodflow to allow better handling of G-forces, etc. As long as the
car is designed for it, and the rigger has a good VCR they should be
allowed to do more than a normal driver. Passengers however are a
different matter.

--
Scott Harrison

Message no. 85 On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 06:04:01 -0400
Bull <bullcon@*****.com> wrote:
> On 7/28/05, Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:
> >> > Just saying that for
> > > newer players and GMs, it's royal PITA. :)
> >
> > They'll learn :)
> >
> I was referring to the old system, and giving one of my reasons for
> the newer system.
>
> Of course, making it simpler and more streamlined and easier to use
> has also led for some to make the claim that we're "pandering to
> little kids to stupid to learn the rules", which is always fun...
>
> At this point, I'm just damn eager for the game to come out so we can move
> on :)
>
> Bull

I have always welcomed simplification in a basically good game I like. I
liked SRI but didn't play until SR2 when the rules became workable, for
instance.
--Anders

Message no. 86 [SNIP]

> but for general combat most participants should be able to have a
> general idea of how hard a shot is. You know the rough range, the
> light/weather conditions, the cover you and your target are taking,
> whether anyone is moving, yiour cyber/sighting mods, recoil, your
> wounds etc a reasonably skilled shooter (or halfway competent
> player...) should be able to work out the TN instinctively and know
> whther they are on a hiding to nothing. Most of our group can work
> out the TN in a second or two, especially in an ongoing firefight
> as generally only cover and wounds change from shot to shot.

I disagree, actually (surprise surprise :> ).

Knowing your rough range to the target is not going to give you a
measurement in meters. Having spent time on a firing range, I can
tell you that a difference between 20 meters and 50 meters is not
something you can calculate at a glance. Yes, you know one target is
farther away, and can thus guess that it will be harder to hit. But
how far? Are the targets the same size, or is one bigger? That
little optical trick all by itself can throw off your range
estimates, especially if you are shooting without spending a lot of
time aiming. Consider an open parking lot at night with very little
illumination. Is that an ork standing 30 meters away, or a troll
standing 60 meters away? Unless I take the time to gather some other
visual clues to establish perspective, I stand a good chance of
guessing wrong. Especially if he is running, I am ducking, its
raining, I've been shot once already, and adrenaline is ripping
through me so hard I have to think to breathe even remotely normally.
Hence, I don't tell people TN's straight up. Now, if they spend
some actions to gather clues, which also tends to quiet the mind and
body a bit, they can get a good idea of their TN. As I stated back
in my initial post. You ever run a paintball course? That is the
closest I've gotten to simulating a firefight. I've got 15 years of
martial arts experience, so I have much better reference for melee
combat. Adrenaline, all by itself, can fog your judgement of a
scenario terribly. Realistically, combat in Shadowrun is not taking
place under conditions where anything is particularly obvious.

> But requiring players to scrabble around for not only their dice
> from their dice box, but pencils that have fallen on the floor,
> post-its that have become hidden under a charactersheet or a pizza
> box etc, write stuff down, hand it over then come back to them if
> the want to reroll etc, all the while while dealing with other
> characters doing the same rigmarole acting later in the initiative
> order seems a recipe for disaster... either that or you need well-
> disciplined players and given they apparently are incapable of
> learning what dice they can roll they don't smack of well-
> disciplined players...

Some of them are decidedly not. We game around a 4x8 dining room
table. Each player is allowed their character sheet, their dice,
their Post-It pad, writing implements, and a coaster (for beverages).
Books, extra dice, and extra pencils occupy the center of the table.
Anyone puts a pizza box on the gaming table get their head bitten
off. We have a side table for snacks, and small fridge around the
corner for ice and beverages. I like a fairly uncluttered gaming
surface. Players who "scrabble" when their initiative number is
called have their character act later in the pass, when they are done
scrabbling. The same is true for players who wait until their
initiative number is called to think about what their character is
going to do. This includes knowing what question you need to ask the
GM before you make your final decision. For example:

GM: 16
Player: ummm... wait... should I use mana dart again or use my
shotgun... ummm..
GM: 15

As opposed to:

GM: 16
Player: I've had a few seconds for the shock to pass, do I feel like
I could safely risk more drain? Yes? And you said the guy is far
enough away that his features are blurry... probably out of effective
shotgun range. I'll do another mana dart.
GM: Roll, remember your spell pool refreshed.
(player decides how many dice to roll, rolls, writes the roll down
while...)
GM: 15
Next Player: Ummm, well, wait... is it an action to start my
motorcycle...
GM: (while catching notepad from first player...) 14
(GM glances at numbers, crosses off non-successes, tosses it back to
player - has already rolled the NPCs Resistance test and written it
down)

So, some players in my group are very undisciplined. And if that
does not change, they suffer for it. But, a 10 Turn combat scene can
be resolved in a reasonable amount of time.

> Maybe I'm wrong and we are missing out on the nirvana of gaming
> styles,

Unlikely, everyone's math varies, and "nirvana" is a somewhat mutable
achievment. :)

> but it just smacks of a control freak GM and players who have given
> up bothering to learn they system as the GM either forcefeeds them,
> berates their ability, or likes to throw in mysterious modifiers so
> as to make any attempt to discern the 'true' TN unfathomable. (Ok,
> I may be wrong on that last one, but it only takes a couple of
> sessions of transparently working out TN's for common situations
> for players to grasp the modifiers and work it out for themselves
> in my experience)

Actually, I very rarely berate my players. Roughly once a year, and
almost always about getting into character. I do lecture about
mechanics, but only at the end of a combat night. When I am handing
out yet another summary of Shadowrun combat, typed up and annotated
for individual players based on the areas they seem to have trouble
remembering.

The "mysterious modifiers" is just laughable. I have enough to do in
my head without adding obfuscation to the mathematics. :)

As to forcefeeding... what do you mean by that? If you mean I am
"forcefeeding" the TN's, that's my job. In that sense, whether it is
raining, the streetlights are all shot out, and the NPC decides to
sprint are all arbitrary decisions of mine. I am responsible for
generating the world the characters act in. So Target Numbers are
arbitrary. How I arrive at them is consistant, and not at all
arcane. I don't change environmental conditions randomly during a
scenario. And I use the modifiers listed in the rule books. And
some players do quickly figure out most of the modifiers. The third
time you roll 1,3,4,4,7,10 and the GM crosses out the 1 and the 3,
you better be able to figure out that the TN is 4. :) And if she
crosses out everything but the 7 and the 10, then you should be able
to guess that the TN is higher than a 4, natch.

Somehow, I think you are taking issue with the fact that I don't do
something like this:

"Okay, short range so 4, raining and bad lighting so +6, lowlight
vision so -4, smartlink II so -2, target running so +2, aiming once
so -1... roll Pistols and combat pool, tell me how many 5's you get."

And the rest of your objections all seem to stem from this
fundamental difference in our gaming style. My preference is to tell
them the guy is running, its raining, and their lowlight is doing a
decent job of offsetting the lack of good street lights. They
already know if they are hurt, but perhaps not how badly. They know
if they want to aim or not. But, knowing all this in a vague sense,
and knowing that they have to roll 5's versus 7's are two different
things. The latter turns combat into math, and if you've ever been
in simulated (or real) combat, math is the farthest thing from your
mind. If I am crouched in cover, bleeding, and I notice someone
dashing across the open ground in a rainstorm, I know the ballpark
feasibility of shooting him with a pistol, and that is about it.

======Korishinzo
--control freak/GM

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

Message no. 87 According to warlock ., on 28-7-05 20:13 the word on the street was...

> Wonder if you can convert this to *nix...

If you're on a Unix machine, you should know better than to send
HTML-formatted messages ;)

Anyway, I doubt Scott will be able to port it to other Unix flavors than
Darwin/Aqua, as SRDiceRoller appears to use lots of Mac-specific stuff.
That, and I asked much the same a few years ago, and he basically said
"sorry, no" :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Message no. 88 According to Scott Harrison, on 28-7-05 18:02 the word on the street was...

> Actually, the concept of rolling against a TN of 5 is not a
> problem. The problem is no one has explained how things work well
> enough for a program to be written.

How do you mean? All it needs is a text box for the number of dice to
roll, a "Roll 'em" button, and some kind of output field :) I can send
you a copy of the (barely functional) widget if you want, that really
does nothing more than that...

Of course, if you want the kind of functionality your SRDiceRoller
provides, then yes, you're going to need more information on the game
system than you're currently allowed to know ;)

> when I come up with the code hopefully you can once again provide the
> Dutch localization. :-)

That's going to be even easier, because now you can send me the .nibs :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Message no. 89 Ice Heart <korishinzo@*****.com> wrote on Wed, 27 Jul 2005 19:52:28
-0700 (PDT)

>>Another option: just have your players roll multi-colored dice. I
>>know
>>I have red, green and white d6s readily available. If I had every
>>player roll 1 green, 2 red, and the rest white, then I can just
>>mentally
>>subtract the green sucesses (-1 pool), red (-2 pool) or green and
>>red
>>(-3 pool).
>>
>>
>
>Uh, no. I am sorry but this seems horribly unfair to me. Just as I
>don't like the idea of taking dice from a player before they roll, I
>don't like the idea of letting them roll dice that don't matter.
>That seems far more cruel than simply keeping the target number
>secret.
>
>
Perhaps I've played too much Paranoia. The group I game with will
probably own at least three collective copies of the new Shadowrun
within a week if we "upgrade" or start a new campaign under the new
edition (the majority however do essentially agree with you Korishinzo,
in that they are reluctant to purchase the new Shadowrun edition,
especially sight unseen).

I'm sure that the above idea would not be seen as cruel by my group,
simply more evidence that even the nicest guys morph into twisted,
vicious misanthropes when hiding behind the gamemaster's screen.
Seriously, I would only use the above convention with the players' full
knowledge of the rule. Since most of us run a campaign of our own at
some point (I just happen to be the Shadowrun guy), everyone would be
aware of the problem of effectively hiding target numbers in certain
situations. As such, they would be perfectly aware that some of their
successes could potentially not count, and I am sure that they would
attempt to infer how many successes weren't counting from the dice
colours. This would be a little more awkward than simply not telling
them target numbers, but should have approximately the same effect .

Now that I am revisiting the topic, another possible solution would be
to "oppose" their successes by rolling an imprompu test behind the
gamemaster's screen. Your hidden successes subtracting from their
rolls. Again the ominous clatter of unseen dice from behind the
gamemaster's screen should serve to fuel their dark delusional fantasies.

Of course, I assume that this issue will be adequatley dealt with in the
new edition by some other mechanic, and my above ideas are purely
academic. They are both rather clunky, essentially trying to cludge a
possibly obsolete mechanic into an as yet unseen new game system. As
someone else pointed out, the first method I proposed and even the
second require some extra thinking time as it were. I suppose we can
start adding house rules to the new edition after it comes out, when we
can actually see where the tweaks might be useful.

-Tev

Message no. 90 From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
> According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on 27-7-05 23:56 the word on the street
> was...
>
>>> Both have their good and their bad points. IMHO the good/bad balance of
>>> the new system is about the same as with the old -- there are some
>>> things I don't like, but that gets compensated by there being other
>>> things that I do like, and didn't like the equivalent SR3 rules for
>>> (still with me? :)
>>
>> How do you know? Have you signed the NDA, or has somebody else broken
>> theirs?
>
> Would I say something like the above if I hadn't played it? :)

You lucky bastard :-) What part of you body did you have to give?

> Yes, like several others on the list, I've read several drafts of the
> rules in order to playtest them.

I knew Bull was a playtester, but was not aware that you were one of the
choosen.

You could have told me, I did after all drive though Holland twice in the
last month, and I'm sure I could have found a reason to stop near you :-)

Lars

Message no. 91 >From: Scott Harrison
<scott@**********.com> >Reply-To: Shadowrun Discussion
<shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com> >To: Shadowrun Discussion
<shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com> >Subject: Re: SR4
Conversion >Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:46:56
-0400 > > >On Jul 28, 2005, at 14:13,
warlock .
wrote: > >> SRDiceRoller
program > >>Wonder
if you can convert this to *nix... > > Well, Mac OS X is
*nix.
:-) > > However, no it can not be converted since I am
using the
technology >Apple calls Cocoa. There is a GNU version of the
grandfather of >Cocoa called OPENSTEP, but that is very limited
compared to modern >Cocoa. I doubt Apple will port Cocoa to anything
else since it is >the most powerful development system on the planet,
and helps sells >their computers. I also doubt GNU will be able to
get OPENSTEP up >to the level of Cocoa any time in the realistic
future. And I >really do not want to go back to creating X
interfaces. > > As a friendly suggestion you may want to
go out
and pick yourself >up a Mac mini for $500 and a nice KVM switch to
hook up to your >current devices. Then you can see what Mac OS X is
like compared to >Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, or whatever you are
currently running. >Besides getting all the *nix software to run,
and those silly >productivity apps, you would also be able to get
some really cool >things like Delicious Library and of course
SRDiceRoller. :-) > > By the way, the Delicious Monster
folks
who create Delicious >Library run their business on 2 Mac mini
machines. Fun little >servers they seem to make.
:-) > >-- >Scott
Harrison > 

Tell you what, You send me a mac and I will use it :)

OSX is really cool though, and its the only mac OS I would ever really
consider thus far. But for now, I will stick with Win & *nix. I cant really
afford to get into another os. After all, SR4 Is comiing :)

Message no. 92 According to warlock ., on 28-7-05 20:13 the word on the street was...

Wonder if you can convert this to *nix...

If you're on a Unix machine, you should know better than to send
HTML-formatted messages ;)

I do, Im just using hotmail like a silly bastard.

Anyway, I doubt Scott will be able to port it to other Unix flavors than
Darwin/Aqua, as SRDiceRoller appears to use lots of Mac-specific stuff.
That, and I asked much the same a few years ago, and he basically said
"sorry, no" :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

Message no. 93 From: "Gurth" <gurth@******.nl>
> According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on 27-7-05 23:56 the word on the street
> was...
>
>>> Both have their good and their bad points. IMHO the good/bad balance of
>>> the new system is about the same as with the old -- there are some
>>> things I don't like, but that gets compensated by there being other
>>> things that I do like, and didn't like the equivalent SR3 rules for
>>> (still with me? :)
>>
>> How do you know? Have you signed the NDA, or has somebody else broken
>> theirs?
>
> Would I say something like the above if I hadn't played it? :) Yes, like
> several others on the list, I've read several drafts of the rules in order
> to playtest them.

I've seen loads of people say loads of things about SR4, whithout them
actually knowing any more than what has been printed in the FAQs. They
should know better.

Lars

Message no. 94 According to Lars Wagner Hansen, on 29-7-05 21:16 the word on the street
was...

> I've seen loads of people say loads of things about SR4, whithout them
> actually knowing any more than what has been printed in the FAQs. They
> should know better.

Definitely. As we've said so many times before, wait until it comes out
and _then_ you can make valid comments about it.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
de limme
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D+ G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

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