[RPG]: Shadowrun 4th Edition, reviewed by Harlequins_Back (3/2)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11704.phtml

H.B.'s Summary:

A good game, but not a great one.

Go to the full review for more information.

[Dan Davenport]

Good first review, H.B.! You make some really thought-provoking observations about the game.

I haven't played Shadowrun since its first edition and quickly burned out on the rules. I'd hoped this version might be more to my taste. Based upon your review, this edition has problems of its own, but it does sound like it's a little closer to what I'd like to see in the game.

[Kid Twist]

I agree that it's fairly thorough, but I like the changes overall. Yes, it's a new game, but I also felt that the setting was outdated as well. I also like the name changes; it feels less like Gibson's take on cyberpunk.

As for the rules, I thought the first edition rules were pretty clunky as well. I also hated the fact that you sort of had to buy all of the expansion books to run a complete game (there was no way for magic user to advance magicailly in older versions of the main book, for instance.) And I love the wireless world concept.

Overall, this is more of the game I want to see, but then, I've never been much on rules in the first place.

[Lazarus]

For the most part, I think I would agree with your review (not with the score, mind), however there's one big thing I would like to point out:

Astral/Cyber combat is glossed over, because it works exactly like Melee combat with different stats and skills. I can't remember exactly where this is stated, but it's probably at the start of the melee combat section.

Also, don't forget that FastJack also has far better equipment than Joe Average, giving him enough successes ... (yes, I agree, arbitrary stat/skill caps are silly).

On Hacking: well, first, your Smartlink requires the wireless access. Shut that off, you no longer get the benefits from the Smartgun. Second, Hacking is defended by Firewall + (Agent Rating or Hacking skill). You can put a Firewall and Agent anywhere, including the gun. Unfortunately, things like my last sentence there are never explicitly stated in the book; one has to deduce that.

Laz

[Mataxes]

Originally Posted by Lazarus

On Hacking: well, first, your Smartlink requires the wireless access. Shut that off, you no longer get the benefits from the Smartgun. Second, Hacking is defended by Firewall + (Agent Rating or Hacking skill). You can put a Firewall and Agent anywhere, including the gun. Unfortunately, things like my last sentence there are never explicitly stated in the book; one has to deduce that.

You can also 'slave' pretty much all of your personal wireless devices/enhancements to your PAN (commlink), requiring that anybody who wishes to hack your system needs to hack your commlink -- so slap a high firewall program on that and it should do a lot to prevent most electronic intrusions.

It doesn't necessarily prevent jamming the wireless signal, but in my games I go with the idea that while wireless connectivity is standard, just about everything can still be run with hard-wired fiberoptics. This prevents some of the cooler aspects the wireless matrix has added to the game, but gets around some of the more annoying break points in the set-up.

[Mataxes]

From the review:

To make matters worse, you need to track two different kinds of penalties, instead of just one.

How is this different from earlier editions of SR? In that one you had fluctuating dice pools and target numbers.

Now nearly all bonuses/penalties adjust the die pool, and the number of 'hits' needed is the 'difficulty'. For contested rolls, whichever side gets more hits wins the challenge (ties go to defender, since the attacker scored no net hits). For simple tests, the target is fixed (and usually 1). The target doesn't typically change with modifiers.

Calling it a 'rip off' of the nWOD system is a popular accusation these days, and while there are many similarities between the two, I don't think it's a case of FanPro ripping them off -- I think its more a case of RPG system evolution heading in the same direction (there were a few similarities between previous iterations of SR and the old WoD system, after all).

All in all, not a bad review. Having been perusing the (PDF) book myself, I agree that the organization of the current rules leaves a little to be deisred. I've been a fan of SR since the 2nd Edition, but the game mechanics always drove me up the wall after two or three sessions. I find the new system to be more intuitive, less intrusive, and an overall improvement.

I can understand why long time players of the game might be a bit cheesed off (I was a long time fan, but not much of a player), but I think the game is a bit more accessible than it was.

[Mozart]

I had a chance to glance over a friend's copy at the weekend.

As a complete newcommer to Shadowrun I wasn't sure what to expect, but I honestly found the parts of the book I read to be pretty intuitive. I had a skim through chargen and the basic system information, togehter with the combat and magic sections, and it seemed to make sense.

I actually liked the way in which combat in different environments (physical, astral, the web) is broadly similar so only one system is required. Similarly, I thought the identical underlying structure to magic, technomancy and hacking using spirits, sprites and programmes was a strength and not a weakness. Characters appear capable of the same basic actions but the flavour varies in each case.

Although I haven't read through in detail, I didn't find the sections that I did read to be confusing in layout, and I fully intend to pick up a copy as soon as my FLGS gets a restock.

[Harlequins_Back]

Originally Posted by Mataxes

How is this different from earlier editions of SR? In that one you had fluctuating dice pools and target numbers.

I'm sorry, that's wrong. In SR 1-3, the only penalty was a TN increase. Nothing short of attribute loss could reduce your "dice pools". While there were allocatable dice pools, they weren't affected by penalties; combat pool, etc, required resource management, not penalty counting.

The equivalent of SR4 "dice pools" were your skill/attribute ratings; only magic could cause combat reductions of attributes, and nothing could cause a skill loss. They never "fluctuated"; that's a misconception caused by people getting Shadowrun and oWoD mixed up. Shadowrun started having trouble creating a separate identity from it's child, oWoD; with these changes, things are going to be even harder.

Anyway, everyone will like different things; but I discovered that while the basic section is really accessible, the rest of the rules aren't nearly as friendly. There's also a lot of mechanical blips, and very odd omissions. I also found the on-again off-again shadowslang to be very distracting. It's not a bad game, by any stretch of the imagination; you'll just have more fun with others.

BTW, History lesson: many of the original Shadowrun playtesters and a few of the devs went on to found White Wolf, which explains the original similarities. However, they did make an effort to be different-- skill + attribute vs floating TN, against Shadowrun's skill or attribute + allocation, vs floating TN. The only real similarity is the floating TN bit. These new rules aren't just "convergent evolution"; they're a straight port. The White Wolf fixed TN rules have existed since at least '99, with Aberrant; you can't tell me that it's just a coincidence when the original's been out for over 6 years!

[Monkey to the Fleet Savant]

Originally Posted by Harlequins_Back

I'm sorry, that's wrong. In SR 1-3, the only penalty was a TN increase. Nothing short of attribute loss could reduce your "dice pools". While there were allocatable dice pools, they weren't affected by penalties; combat pool, etc, required resource management, not penalty counting.

I beg to differ, atleast in my copy of the 3rd edition, for example mages gain dice pool penalties, target number modifiers and success thresholds depending on the spell cast. Same applies to other aspects of the game too.

[Lazarus]

Dude, there's more than just World of Darkness out there with dice pools! Not only that, but "fixed TN" is a trivial fix to people complaining that they don't like "floating TN". The rest (threshold, dice pool mods) flow directly from that. The measure of similarity of two systems is not in how they roll the dice, but why they roll the dice, and what they do with the results. For example, WoD combat has no active defense, whereas SR4 does.

Also, how about this for figuring out the difference between threshold and dice pool mods: the threshold is the difficulty of the task (and should've been named "difficulty" as it is in Exalted), whereas the dice pool mods are situational modifiers. You don't have to keep track of anything modifying the threshold - there's no "starting point", basically, there's just the final value.

Laz