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