New 6th Edition Shadowrun has been announced. Lets talk about it

[Florian]

I don't play ShadowRun, but that doesn't strike me as a particular problem. Why is weapon damage not scaling with strength an issue? Especially since it seems to be a slashing weapon which would benefit less from it in reality.

Because in a sense, SR went full reverse in the arms race. The archetypes of Street Samurai or Razorgirl became a thing because a fully cybered/adepted meta-human could go toe-to-toe with the finest high tech weaponry mankind had to offer while chrome/magic worked best at expressing raw power in the form of blades, tomahawks and bows.

As for the overall topic, cannot say that I'm too excited. Been playing SR sind 1st edition and rules got more complex since then, I feel that in-between 4th, 5th and the upcoming 6th, they try to balance out the whole inconsistencies the system accrued without wanting to reduce the complexity level. Had high hopes for Anarchy, but alas....

[Delta]

To be honest, having watched the 2nd session of the actual play on Shadowcasters, I'm not particularly impressed.

I mean, considering on what a short timeframe this was announced (even catching quite a few people involved in the game by surprise) it's not too shocking the realize this wasn't really tested in-depth, but if you're already discussing how you might want to houserule damage ratings and armor only two sessions in isn't making a great impression, a lot of stuff seems to be all over the place (not that older editions were incredibly well-balanced, to be fair)

[DigoDragon]

Also after a certain amount of editions I think the urge to make an serious changes goes down. I mean you might make changes that bring in new players or you might loose the old players or you might put in tons of work for no effect. The biggest system overhaul I can think of is D&D 4e and that is not inspiring confidence. ... I still wish more people would.

What if they rip out a lot of the mechanics and streamline it like D&D did in 5e? I feel that SR could use a similar rules treatment.

[Delta]

What if they rip out a lot of the mechanics and streamline it like D&D did in 5e? I feel that SR could use a similar rules treatment.

Yeah I'd buy that in a heartbeat. I had hoped Anarchy to be something like that but never really liked it as much as I hoped.

[Ignimortis]

What if they rip out a lot of the mechanics and streamline it like D&D did in 5e? I feel that SR could use a similar rules treatment.

While they seem to advertise SR 6e to 5e as "what 5e was to 3.5 D&D", I remain very sceptical. Shutting down whole concepts (it's official, Hardy himself said that tanks are no longer supported as character concept) and not fixing the internal problems with the system and the underlying problems with the setting which beget the mechanical problems isn't advancement. Then again, I don't like D&D 5e either, because it doesn't do what 3.5 did when you locked all the cheesy wizards and useless fighters in the cellar and just played the good middle-of-the-road classes instead.

[Delta]

While they seem to advertise SR 6e to 5e as "what 5e was to 3.5 D&D", I remain very sceptical.

Yeah, that's along the lines they like to use, but honestly, if you watch any of the stuff that's already out there, it just... isn't. Whether it's combat, magic or matrix, a simple, quick, beginner-friendly system SR6 is not. It's still an amazingly complicated game with convoluted subsystems, and even worse, now it's convoluted subsystems some of which are really based around a new concept of back and forth of Edge replacing modifiers and stuff, while others are still clearly designed without giving that a second thought and using Edge like it has been in SR4 and 5, so now the spending of Edge has been designed around the idea of a constant flow of Edge so everything is much more expensive, while only very specific parts of the game have been actually designed around giving you a way to actually gain Edge that way.

It just seems like they had this whole idea of a more abstract, Edge-centric, conflict-driven system which does indeed sound promising but at some point just stopped and bolted the rest of the system onto that which is just SR4/5 with some minor tweaks.

[DigoDragon]

Yeah I'd buy that in a heartbeat. I had hoped Anarchy to be something like that but never really liked it as much as I hoped.

I looked at Anarchy and it felt to me like it wanted to be rules-lite, but halfway through it got nervous and backed off that goal.

While they seem to advertise SR 6e to 5e as "what 5e was to 3.5 D&D", I remain very sceptical. Shutting down whole concepts (it's official, Hardy himself said that tanks are no longer supported as character concept) and not fixing the internal problems with the system and the underlying problems with the setting which beget the mechanical problems isn't advancement. Then again, I don't like D&D 5e either, because it doesn't do what 3.5 did when you locked all the cheesy wizards and useless fighters in the cellar and just played the good middle-of-the-road classes instead.

What I like about 5e is the fewer situational bonuses and penalties you have to deal with. Advantage/Disadvantage covers a lot of those. Some friends of mine complain that 5e feels less powerful and that's a fair criticism since you have this "bounded accuracy" concept that limits the upper ends of stats and DCs. But I like that it's easier to put together a group of PCs, get into the game quickly, and be able to fight reasonable challenges at most levels without needing to specialize hard in something.

That's what I'd hope for a new edition of SR to do. Building characters takes a while, and there's always those odd-duck builds that give a huge dice pool to potentially one-shot most targets on either side. In some SR editions, like 4e, you really had to specialize those dice pools to survive.

[The Glyphstone]

This sounds like they took Shadowrun and tried to bolt the FATE engine's system of Fate Points onto it, renaming them Edge.

[Man_Over_Game]

It might actually make me interested in the system?

Shadowrun always seemed to be a system that was very much style>substance. I always loved its vibe - but its mechanics are mediocre.

The biggest thing that they really need to fix, which has been endemic in every edition - is that there are too many times when one character takes the spotlight and all of the other players are stuck twiddling their thumbs for 20-30 minutes. Like whenever 1-2 characters start decking.

If something is going on at the table, 99% of the time it should either be very quick and/or include everyone to some degree. Not everyone has to be equally potent in every scene, but waiting around as a mage, adept, or street samurai while the decker does his schtick gets old fast. When combat breaks out the decker is sub-par, but at least he can contribute.

Maybe something where the decker can bring tag-alongs on his decking adventures who get lesser abilities? I don't have an easy fix - but that doesn't make it any less of an issue.

But I have always loved the Shadowrun vibe. I'll be hoping that it's able to keep the vibe and finally fix the crunch.

For Decking/Astral Traveling, It'd probably be best to simplify both systems to have the results be near-instant (most scenarios where they're relevant, they're practically near-instant in universe-time anyway), and then provide some kind of long-term, real-life benefit for maintaining their connection to the other side.

Spoiler: Decking Example

Show

Make it so that Decking is dramatically shortened to a few short rolls to determine what things he can interact with, and then he provides benefits for each real-life round. For example, he determines his level of access upon initially Decking, and then he can modify a number of things in real life based on his level of access, whether that be alarms, turrets, communications systems, whatever. If he needs to gain more access, or if he wants to try and brute force a solution for more access at the cost of higher risks, he can do that. So he initiates by hacking the system, gets an Access level of 4 and a Risk level of 3, uses his access to start controlling turrets (Cost 3) and sensors (Cost 1) for his team that's moving past the access point. He plays in real-time like everyone else, and manages Access vs. Risk on his own turns.

But they really need to shift away from having different speed levels. Have everything be based around real-time, keep the specifics of the weird stuff really simple, and allow them to add benefits that apply to the real-world. This ensures that nobody is hogging the spotlight, and everyone's relevant in the same time-zone.

The problem is, this dramatically simplifies how Decking and Astral Travelling works, but...that's the cost of making the game work, right? Shadowrun's starting to become kinda obscure, and they gotta find a way to fix the problems they keep repeating.

[Particle_Man]

More a setting question than a system one: Are Obsidimen (from Earthdawn) likely to show up?

[Delta]

More a setting question than a system one: Are Obsidimen (from Earthdawn) likely to show up?

I'd be shocked if they ever showed up as PCs or anything.

I know that T'Skrang-like creatures have been mentioned (as "Chupacabras") in the jungles of Madagascar, and I could imagine that at some point a similarly obscure reference to Obisidmen shows up somewhere (or maybe even has, I can't claim to know every sourcebook released in the last decade or so by heart), but probably not ever as a relevant thing in the setting.

[SaurOps]

I'd be shocked if they ever showed up as PCs or anything.

I know that T'Skrang-like creatures have been mentioned (as "Chupacabras") in the jungles of Madagascar, and I could imagine that at some point a similarly obscure reference to Obisidmen shows up somewhere (or maybe even has, I can't claim to know every sourcebook released in the last decade or so by heart), but probably not ever as a relevant thing in the setting.

Given the description in Cyberpriates of chupacabras as HMHVV-infected lemurs, I never considered that the critters were supposed to be t'skrang. Which, in all likelihood, will not show up either, as the Earthdawn IP, being under the auspices of a resurrected FASA, has had to pull hard away from Topps-owned Shadowrun.

(Also, according to post-Earthdawn Shadowrun replacement 1879, the t'skrang were from another planet but managed to migrate to Earth via a cyclical magical portal. All t'skrang on Earth died by the end of the Age of Legends, but 1879 deals with finding another connection with their world, which Victorian Britons are attempting to ruthlessly exploit with steamtech.)

[CharonsHelper]

For Decking/Astral Traveling, It'd probably be best to simplify both systems to have the results be near-instant (most scenarios where they're relevant, they're practically near-instant in universe-time anyway), and then provide some kind of long-term, real-life benefit for maintaining their connection to the other side.

...

The problem is, this dramatically simplifies how Decking and Astral Travelling works, but...that's the cost of making the game work, right? Shadowrun's starting to become kinda obscure, and they gotta find a way to fix the problems they keep repeating.

Well yeah, the two ways to make spotlighting sub-systems work are:

1. Have everyone else be able to contribute even in sub-par ways. (Shadowrun's combat does this pretty well, with the decker being able to shoot of gun for some effect but pale in comparison to what the street samurai does.)

2. Have the sub-system be fast. (A max of 2-3 minutes - and that's pushing it.)

I agree that #2 could certainly work, but it's possible that the decker might get grumpier about being so sub-par in combat if he doesn't get to hog the spotlight as much. (Pure speculation.) Maybe it'd work better if it was easier to overlap decking & rigging drones in combat so that the character would have stuff to do there?

#2 is actually the way I went with the system I'm working on for hacking & piloting etc. But they aren't things that a character has to be fully dedicated to, leaving them sub-par in fighting monstrous aliens or space pirates.

[Telwar]

Given the description in Cyberpriates of chupacabras as HMHVV-infected lemurs, I never considered that the critters were supposed to be t'skrang. Which, in all likelihood, will not show up either, as the Earthdawn IP, being under the auspices of a resurrected FASA, has had to pull hard away from Topps-owned Shadowrun.

(Also, according to post-Earthdawn Shadowrun replacement 1879, the t'skrang were from another planet but managed to migrate to Earth via a cyclical magical portal. All t'skrang on Earth died by the end of the Age of Legends, but 1879 deals with finding another connection with their world, which Victorian Britons are attempting to ruthlessly exploit with steamtech.)

I always figured that the precursors of the t'skrang were the afanc, from Paranormal Animals of Europe. That critter book had windlings, and the afanc had a suspcious range of Wales and the entire Ukraine.

I know that some of the 4e and 5e books had rumors of "stone trolls" associated with dragon lairs (and roundly derided as an urban legend), but I can't remember for the life of me which ones they were.

[SaurOps]

I always figured that the precursors of the t'skrang were the afanc, from Paranormal Animals of Europe. That critter book had windlings, and the afanc had a suspcious range of Wales and the entire Ukraine.

I'm not seeing how those go together. The t'skrang are humanoid reptiles with a wide range of clashing features (riverine preferences, beaks with teeth, flexible tails). An afanc is a crocodilian, and not even humanoid in the slightest. The habitation range doesn't even enter into it at that point.

I know that some of the 4e and 5e books had rumors of "stone trolls" associated with dragon lairs (and roundly derided as an urban legend), but I can't remember for the life of me which ones they were.

Obsidimen are a good deal shorter than trolls, though, and don't have horns or tusks. Their natural armor is also shaped very differently. It's doubtful that anyone would mistake them for trolls. On the other hand, we already have plenty of rules for spirit inhabitation of objects, such as statues, used for homunculi.

[Telwar]

I'm not seeing how those go together. The t'skrang are humanoid reptiles with a wide range of clashing features (riverine preferences, beaks with teeth, flexible tails). An afanc is a crocodilian, and not even humanoid in the slightest. The habitation range doesn't even enter into it at that point.

Like I said, *awakened* Afanc...which are of course already awakened crocs. So the idea is it's an intermediate stage.

But the range was the main thing. I've never been aware of a tradition of crocodilians in Ukraine, and to have them show up there in addition to Wales seemed rather suspicious to me.

Of course, I realize that this was unlikely. But that was an *awfully* suspicious range...

Obsidimen are a good deal shorter than trolls, though, and don't have horns or tusks. Their natural armor is also shaped very differently. It's doubtful that anyone would mistake them for trolls. On the other hand, we already have plenty of rules for spirit inhabitation of objects, such as statues, used for homunculi.

On the other hand, the people in setting reporting that they see these "stone trolls" aren't necessarily going to default to "it's a possessed object." And since nobody really sees sasquatches that often, a weird thing that you see walking around on its own accord that looks like it's made of rock, you're going to default to a troll, since that's relatively common and I don't think they'd think of orks.

[SaurOps]

Like I said, *awakened* Afanc...which are of course already awakened crocs. So the idea is it's an intermediate stage.

But the range was the main thing. I've never been aware of a tradition of crocodilians in Ukraine, and to have them show up there in addition to Wales seemed rather suspicious to me.

Of course, I realize that this was unlikely. But that was an *awfully* suspicious range...

Edit: Dropping it.

On the other hand, the people in setting reporting that they see these "stone trolls" aren't necessarily going to default to "it's a possessed object."

Well, most people would probably skip the "inhabiting an object" part of "spirit inhabiting an object" when something weird of that sort showed up. Or possibly that they're looking at a gargoyle.

And since nobody really sees sasquatches that often, a weird thing that you see walking around on its own accord that looks like it's made of rock, you're going to default to a troll, since that's relatively common and I don't think they'd think of orks.

Since when were trolls made of rock, or even vaguely in the vicinity of appearing to be made of rock? And why did you bring sasquatches into it?

[Delta]

So they had this huge countdown up with ended last night and then... nothing happened, for several hours the countdown was just looping back for the last 13 seconds, and a couple hours later suddenly a ridiculously small window popped up where you can read shadowtalk, a line at a time, about some kind of weird matrix blackout hitting big cities all across UCAS. This smells of "Oh no we completely forgot about that thing we wanted to do for our big countdown, let's just throw up a few lines of text and pretend this was the plan all along!"... I'm sorry, I really want to feel confident for this new edition but they're not making it easy :(

[Ignimortis]

So they had this huge countdown up with ended last night and then... nothing happened, for several hours the countdown was just looping back for the last 13 seconds, and a couple hours later suddenly a ridiculously small window popped up where you can read shadowtalk, a line at a time, about some kind of weird matrix blackout hitting big cities all across UCAS. This smells of "Oh no we completely forgot about that thing we wanted to do for our big countdown, let's just throw up a few lines of text and pretend this was the plan all along!"... I'm sorry, I really want to feel confident for this new edition but they're not making it easy :(

It's CGL. The best advice that can be given at this point is this: use the base rules if you're crunch-friendly enough, or any conversion if you don't want to fix the myriad problems present in every edition since the inception. Look through older lore sourcebooks like Sixth World Almanac (the new Neo-Anarchist Streetpedia is bad), and, I guess, just run whatever you want from Shadowrun without actually touching current Shadowrun.

[ErdrickOfAliaha]

Decking and keeping the party together.
Something to chew in: let deckers 'summon' ICE style minions, who are played by the other PC's, you could even have a set if archtypical independent AIs which mirrored the range of PCs, so either the street sam can be the street sam in the virtual world, or everyone could switch roles to make the RP feel/dynamic of the virtual scenes be more drastic.

This is admittedly a second place suggestion to making it instantaneous, but I think getting everyone involved is more of a priority.

Also, I haven't played SR for 20 of the 30 years since 1e was released, so if this is too out of touch and fantasy-like...well sorry.

[Delta]

Well we already know nothing like this is ever going to happen in Shadowrun 6, so not sure whether this discussion wouldn't be better suited to the general discussion thread.

I see this approach massively clashing with the general approach to how the Matrix works in Shadowrun. Sure, if your Matrix expert PC is a technoshaman who constantly throws around half a dozen sprites to do their bidding, this might work, but even then, I'd argue it'd need a massive rework of their abilities to make this even remotely interesting. And for a lot of Matrix stuff, you don't need half a dozen sprites/agents/whatever, I feel like the only way to pull this off is to make it a "very special episode" kind of thing where everyone is involved (which you in theory can already do with Ultraviolet hosts, foundation hacks and so on, if you have a group so inclined) or to make it feel very forced if you have to create every Matrix task around needing multiple characters to complete.

And from the point of view of a player simply not interested in Matrix stuff, you've actually made the problem much worse, not only making the Matrix side of thing take a lot more time than it already did but forcing them to engage in stuff they're not interested in, with very limited agency to boot.

[Glimbur]

Go completely backward of the last suggestion and let the hacker force stuff to manifest in meatspace so you can shoot it (or talk to it I guess). Would require a lot of work to make it distinctive and interesting, plus it is very jarring with the setting. But it's an idea.

[Delta]

The matrix/electronics user that uses his skills to affect technology in a way to directly and physically affect meatspace is already a thing, it's called a rigger.

[druid91]

Because in a sense, SR went full reverse in the arms race. The archetypes of Street Samurai or Razorgirl became a thing because a fully cybered/adepted meta-human could go toe-to-toe with the finest high tech weaponry mankind had to offer while chrome/magic worked best at expressing raw power in the form of blades, tomahawks and bows.

As for the overall topic, cannot say that I'm too excited. Been playing SR sind 1st edition and rules got more complex since then, I feel that in-between 4th, 5th and the upcoming 6th, they try to balance out the whole inconsistencies the system accrued without wanting to reduce the complexity level. Had high hopes for Anarchy, but alas....

Honestly, I disagree with that. While effective, melee is nowhere near the king of the battlefield in Shadowrun.

The thing is, you're not on a battlefield. You're stealth operatives and the silence of a melee weapon helps be stealthy.

[LibraryOgre]

Melee becomes effective when your strength gets high enough to be a bigger power than comparable weapons. The infamous troll with a dikoted ax, who chops Panzers out of the sky.

[druid91]

I wish them good luck with that one. Just hitting the Panzer is basically impossible. And certainly doesn't hold up against the firepower the Panzer can dish back out in return.

[Ignimortis]

I wish them good luck with that one. Just hitting the Panzer is basically impossible. And certainly doesn't hold up against the firepower the Panzer can dish back out in return.

Oh, but it does. While hitting something flying is really hard with melee (duh), if you actually hit something as a loltroll with a combat axe, phooey, this thing is going down. Let's just say that 18 BOD/18 Armor T-bird is gonna have a lot of trouble soaking all that damage, which starts at 20P and -4 AP. You can chop a car in half with that with ease.

But closer to the topic - I got my hands on the Beginner's Box, and, well, it's hilarious. All the bad things that were expected of 6e are true: mundanes are nerfed (again), mages are buffed (again), and in fact, there are very few niches left for non-magic characters now. If Technomancers prove to be not awful in the CRB, you should just probably have a non-mundane team of MysAd, Full mage, Techno and another Mysad or fullmage. Don't know if they all should be trolls, though - the quickstart seemed very weird in that none of the pregens have any stat above 6.

[DigoDragon]

All the bad things that were expected of 6e are true: mundanes are nerfed (again), mages are buffed (again), and in fact, there are very few niches left for non-magic characters now.

Well that's not very encouraging.

Any changes to the Initiative Pass system?

[Morvram]

Now, this is coming from somebody who's just starting to play 5th edition Shadowrun, so perhaps I have no room to talk here. But it seems to me that the problem with 5th edition Shadowrun isn't that it's too complicated and crunchy; it's that the book is quite possibly the most poorly edited thing I've ever encountered. If 6th edition is published by the same people and they don't hire more editors, it isn't going to matter how streamlined the actual game system is.

[Ignimortis]

Now, this is coming from somebody who's just starting to play 5th edition Shadowrun, so perhaps I have no room to talk here. But it seems to me that the problem with 5th edition Shadowrun isn't that it's too complicated and crunchy; it's that the book is quite possibly the most poorly edited thing I've ever encountered. If 6th edition is published by the same people and they don't hire more editors, it isn't going to matter how streamlined the actual game system is.

Absolutely. Better editing and layout would've solved 70% of Shadowrun 5e's jankiness.

Well that's not very encouraging.

Any changes to the Initiative Pass system?

Initiative is now D&D. You roll once per combat, that's the initiative order You get 1 major action and 2 minor actions as a base, each +1d6 of initiative also grants you +1 minor actions. You can trade 4 minor actions for a major. Attacking/spellcasting is a major action, obviously. Movement is now a minor action, as is full defense. You can't get more than 2 major actions and 1 minor due to how augmentations to initiative are supposed to work. So this basically means that a samurai attacks twice...or they have to both move and call full defense, which means they attack once. Like everyone else.

I wasn't kidding when I said mundanes were nerfed. We still don't know anything about adepts, but combat characters, in general, are nerfed severely. The days of dropping in and popping four people on your way out in 3 seconds are gone. The best you can do is two, and if you're lucky and also in possession of a burst-fire weapon while two people are close by, you can drop three...by splitting the dicepool which is obviously a bad idea, because 60%+ of your damage comes from net hits now.