| From: | maxnoel_fr@*****.fr (Max Noel) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | SR4 Loophole Found? [now completely OT, warning: SR4 bashing] |
| Date: | Sun, 2 Oct 2005 19:44:38 +0200 |
> You could do what I do... stick with older edition rulebooks and only
> buy SR4 books that are purely setting information.
Actually, the setting changes are probably the things I like the
least in that new edition. Some of them feel like they were written
with the "15-year-old american boys" target audience in mind. There
are a lot of inconsistencies, zero originality, and Matrix 2.0
achieves the incredible feat of being even more laughable than 1.0
(without the excuse of being a mandatory feature of classic cyberpunk-
style settings).
The system, however, is full of good ideas. It only has two
major flaws:
1. The core mechanic uses a linear curve and therefore scales almost
as badly as d20. That was, however, a design goal -- quoting Pete
Taylor, "because American gamers want easy-to-calculate probabilities".
2. It needed at least 3 (and more likely 6+) additional months of
development/playtesting time. I'm not sure what I'm allowed to say
about my experience as a playtester, but it's very clear from the
final version that this is a product that was rushed out of the door
so that it could be out for GenCon.
It could be fixed (well, 1. couldn't, but I can live with that
if the rest is flawless). Then Shadowrun 4.5 would be a good, perhaps
even great, game. I used to think SR4 would be interesting in that
its core mechanic would be inferior to that of SR1 to 3, but its
execution would be superior.
As things stand, the SR4 system perfectly achieves its design
goal of being easy to pick up. But that's pretty much all it does.
We're not even out of chargen and we're finding blatant holes and
balance issues everywhere (again). Nobody wants to play an Adept,
much less a mystic one, or a technomancer. All the players of non-
hacker characters have gone to great lengths pointing out to the GM
that unless explicitly stated and checked for drunkenness, none of
their gear is wi-fi enabled. The hacker is laughing at us because
we're struggling with the BPs we've got while he's already quite
effective and still has about 200 points to spend.
Maybe those issues aren't as crippling as they look. After all,
the final version is very different from the last playtest drafts
(hopefully). Maybe we'll be distracted by the book's good looks
('cause aside from that hideous cover art, it does have them --
excellent job, Adam), forget that ROT13 is the only encryption
algorithm known to man in 2070 and that everything runs an unpatched
version of Windows Me. Maybe we'll even rationalize the fact that
riggers moved from one system that had been working and secure for 50
+ years to some swiss cheese that was devised by people who have
already fucked up *twice* (I take it you non-French don't know the
Shadoks, do you?). I doubt it.
We've decided to give SR4 one last chance. We'll be playing one
full adventure, using stock rules. If it works well, my full
apologies (for what they're worth) will be on this list. If it
doesn't, we'll give in to Adam's subliminal advertising, mix Dreaming
Cities (which, by the way, is an absolutely brilliant game) with Ex
Machina, and have fun that way in the Shadowrun setting circa 2050.
-- Wild_Cat
(/me dons his asbestos suit. "Want one, Kori?")
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