From:	Arcady arcady@***.net
Subject:	SR Narrowing of focus
Date:	Sun, 15 Aug 1999 12:13:26 -0700

> I agree. TOTALLY. Yeah, SR3's brought in new players. Maybe it's
> crisper. But,
> y'know what? It doesn't feel that great. It almost is seeming
> cookie-cutter. "Go
> on run. Commit Crime. Get Double-crossed. End. Repeat as necessary."

I'm one of those new players. And also one of the old players.

I picked up the game when it first came out, liked the setting but couldn't
find people to game it with. So I dropped away until 1998 when I bought the
new edition.

It's definitely a more narrow and less 'appetizing' flavor in the game. In
the old game I could feel at ease with playing the 'Rebel against the
system'. In the new game I feel I'm being asked to play an amoral thug.
There's less for me to identify with.
Why did I buy back in? Cause the new game had a slick look to it and
promised to give me all the rules in a narrowed down focused presentation.
And cause it seemed to fix a few of the things I had seen as major bugs in
the system (I remember playing Food Fight in 1st edition and having a PC
unload a full clip of ammo on auto fire at an unarmored NPC (or the other
way around, can't remember to well) and the victim not even take a single
wound... Then somebody pulling out a knife and killing another character in
one action. I didn't see this and still haven't seen this problem in the new
edition.

But it was definitely not the narrow focus that brought me in. If anything
it may drive me away in a few years after I run dry on ideas from all the
old sourcebooks I've collected...
Hopefully not though.

I brought in a new player last week. After the game he commented to me
about how it looked like it was just a game about thugs and mercenary the
players had been. I told him to give it time as I am trying to see if I can
break my players of that and expand the focus to be a bit more 'romantic'
(as in epic/heroic, not HQ romance novel).

I think Shadowrun is in risk of gaining a lot of new people and then losing
them. Which is actually worse for the long term bottom line than ever
gaining them at all to begin with.

Arcady http://www.jps.net/arcady/ <0){{{{><
The Revolution will not be televised; it'll be emailed.
/.)\ Stop making sense. Be an Anti Intellectual
\(@/ Be Tao. Live Tao. Feel Tao. But don't do Tao.