ShadowRun 5E ... 2050

[FiranSurvivor]

@Lithium said:

@FiranSurvivor said:

@Lithium said:

@FiranSurvivor That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, why would I want to spend the time and waste my hours coding something that SEGMENTED the games players from each others further by allowing coded runs that they could go on BY THEMSELVES?! Why would I want to turn it into a MUD that is all about coded combats and encounters when I am using MUX code and the idea is to tell a story not provide people ways to wack their e-pud to how bad ass they can design a character into doing EVERYTHING they need to do to replace a whole team and EVERYONE ON THE WHOLE GAME?! That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard of! Clearly my MUSH is going to FAIL because I'm not turning a MUX into a MUD. OHMERGERD! Grow the Eff Up.

Get real, The only butthurt I am seeing wasn't from me. I was basically just saying No. Nobody likes it, but it doesn't mean it's hostility.

I don't think you know what the word hostility means.

I guess you missed the line directly over that point you tried to take out of context where I made abundantly clear, I was about to be hostile.

We really need a way to ignore posts by other people...

My bad I did miss that line.

[FiranSurvivor]

@ThatGuyThere said:

Lithium says, as if STing for shadowrun is somehow easy.

Maybe it is just me but I don't see how runnign for ShadowRun is any more difficult then running for anything else?
Now running things in general online is a pain in the ass, but more so for scheeduling then the actual scenes.

I don't think running scenes for SR is anymore difficult then any other game. But every game I've been on so far (Admittedly haven't been many) that rely on staff and competent storytellers feels dead because staff are often busy and storytellers are rarely competent.

I think Lithium took my ideas of solo runs waaaay out of context. And indeed when I first mentioned that aspect it was a single sentence that was just a side mention.

[Lithium]

@FiranSurvivor Maybe I did, but I am very vehemently against the idea. MUSH's are about cooperative play, and not about solo adventure. That is the realm of MUD's, in my eyes.

[Jennkryst]

@ThatGuyThere said:

Maybe it is just me but I don't see how runnign for ShadowRun is any more difficult then running for anything else?
Now running things in general online is a pain in the ass, but more so for scheeduling then the actual scenes.

It's probably got more to do with what we have experience seeing on MUs, which is SR3 - where every different archetype you could be was a different minigame that played differently from everything else. The only reason people know both normal combat and magic is because magic is sexy. Decking, Rigging, Fixing, Surgery, and any form of non-magical crafting? All 'too complicated' to learn.

If you do a PRP and a player using rules you're less than an expert shows up, they either sit on the sidelines, or get their specifics nulled down to one roll. Telling a decker to do one Computer roll to do hacking is like telling a Street Samurai to do a single Pistol roll to determine how well they killed the hit squad coming after them.

[Alzie]

As far as I'm aware, SR5 didn't dramatically dumb down the rules, so there are still different rule sets for every archetype. You got your magic rules, then your astral rules, then your decking rules, then your combat rules, then your socialize rules, then your contact rules, then your buying shit rules. All of those rules then have sub-rules - usually about 6 or 7 - that you have to know. When I say it isn't easy, it's because I did ST for shadowrun, I ran runs on Denver and other Mu's. And I was one of the few people who could do decking, magic, astral, combat, tats and cybergear in the same PrP without blowing their brains out. Let's not pretend like Shadowrun is 'easy' to ST for. Anyone that has ever played Shadowrun knows it's not and they also know they learned their one section and stuck to it.

As to SR5, I have that book but never got around to reading it. It seemed infinitely smaller so maybe they really did cut back all those rules into a single, cohesive, easier to understand format. If so maybe it is now easy to ST for shadowrun. However, yes, I'm not used to SR5, I'm used to SR3 and SR4.

[Lithium]

@Alzie said:

As far as I'm aware, SR5 didn't dramatically dumb down the rules, so there are still different rule sets for every archetype. You got your magic rules, then your astral rules, then your decking rules, then your combat rules, then your socialize rules, then your contact rules, then your buying shit rules. All of those rules then have sub-rules - usually about 6 or 7 - that you have to know. When I say it isn't easy, it's because I did ST for shadowrun, I ran runs on Denver and other Mu's. And I was one of the few people who could do decking, magic, astral, combat, tats and cybergear in the same PrP without blowing their brains out. Let's not pretend like Shadowrun is 'easy' to ST for. Anyone that has ever played Shadowrun knows it's not and they also know they learned their one section and stuck to it.

As to SR5, I have that book but never got around to reading it. It seemed infinitely smaller so maybe they really did cut back all those rules into a single, cohesive, easier to understand format. If so maybe it is now easy to ST for shadowrun. However, yes, I'm not used to SR5, I'm used to SR3 and SR4.

That's just ShadowRun having a lot of rules. ShadowRun /does/ have a lot of rules, but once you know them, it's no harder to /run a prp for/ than any other system.

While I agree that ShadowRun /rules/ can be harder to master, or even be really familiar with that's just a barrier for the game as a whole. Anyone who runs/ST's for /any/ game should know the rules.

Take oWoD for example, /so/ many people running plots for Weresplats didn't know that a Spirit's Rage was the Target Number to /damage/ them, and then they got to soak normally... which suddenly makes really powerful spirits quite trivial.

Running ShadowRun is in my opinion no harder than running any other game, you should know the rules for what your plot entails. As for SR5, yes, the rules are a LOT more homogenous now. Attribute + skill tends to be the core of it. It's a lot closer to WoD now in that respect.

[FiranSurvivor]

@Lithium said:

@FiranSurvivor Maybe I did, but I am very vehemently against the idea. MUSH's are about cooperative play, and not about solo adventure. That is the realm of MUD's, in my eyes.

Ok and what about the other 90% of my idea that was literally all about cooperative play...?

[ThatGuyThere]

@Alzie
Not tried runnign it online but have run it table top and I did not find it harder to deal with then WoD of any flavor, and easier then Traveller or Hero System, and likely about the same as any of the various D20 games. (Except 5th Ed D+D which rocks as far as ease of use goes.)
It is a rules medium game so there are a lot of rules light games that would run quicker but none of them are really used for mushes.

[Lithium]

@FiranSurvivor said:

@Lithium said:

@FiranSurvivor Maybe I did, but I am very vehemently against the idea. MUSH's are about cooperative play, and not about solo adventure. That is the realm of MUD's, in my eyes.

Ok and what about the other 90% of my idea that was literally all about cooperative play...?

I guess you missed the part where I said that forcing character connections is a silly idea. You can't force people to be connected, if they don't want to they simply won't RP it. There's no way you can guarantee people will have compatible times, styles, and personalities, to make connections like that viable. At worst, it would make people actively annoyed, or make them bitch, or make them stop logging in.

If you want to be connected to other people's PC's? Talk to them about it. Connections in ShadowRun are generally NPC's that are used/abused and sometimes use/abuse you. They aren't PC's. While you can have connection to a PC, it doesn't mean you get to have a loyalty rating with them because you bought it in chargen. That is unenforceable and I wouldn't even try it.

Connections with PC's are easy, most people want RP, and want to know people. They will readily agree to RP for the /lamest/ reasons ever, just to have RP, especially if it's someone new. They will invent whole reams of data to explain why their street samurai is out shopping for fabric at a farmer's market (Because they need it for a specific disguise to pass through a gangs territory hopefully unmolested) in order to have fun. At least some will.

But /forcing/ someone to RP or be connected without their say in specific ways to someone they may (or do) not know? Not going to happen.

I'm not putting any barriers in place to being connected to other PC's, but I am certainly not going to force them to be connected to random person #6 who wants to know a street samurai. That's up to them. It is their story and their character, not yours, not mine, and for all these reasons (and more) I won't do anything of the sort.

EDIT: As for communication tools, I want to know how many more coded tools we need than RP channels in plot rooms and timestops, pages, bboards, and regular channels, @mail, and +jobs. That's a lot of ways to communicate.

[Reason]

FYI -- Not sure how far down the rabbit hole you've gone, but Shadowrun 5th Edition Matrix rules are frustratingly bad and the Matrix Sourcebook, Data Trails, doesn't adequately treat the holes from the core book.

Completely flat topology. May want to consider some light house ruling aligning the matrix closer to SR3 topology (thought tread lightly as there are some redeeming parts about the game speed-up that results in the unified mechanics across archetypes).

I think it //may// be passable in a table-top setting, with a vigilant GM, but I'm all but certain they don't scale well on a MUSH.

[Lithium]

Yeah I have all the books, and there's a lot of the matrix rules that are going to have to be changed simply because I am yanking out Technomancers wholesale. I also have thoughts on changing matrix rules to be more in line with regular rules. Sleeze allowing stealth rolls in the matrix, program ratings being equipment dice or in the case of offensive programs, different types of weapons, so that the matrix is more streamlined and easy to grasp.

[FiranSurvivor]

@Lithium

I think you're confusing my idea of automated shadowruns with someone else's idea. I never said anything about forcing connections. If anything it would be teams of players through their own choice going on these runs with teams they made with their own friends/connections.

[Reason]

@Lithium said:

Yeah I have all the books, and there's a lot of the matrix rules that are going to have to be changed simply because I am yanking out Technomancers wholesale. I also have thoughts on changing matrix rules to be more in line with regular rules. Sleeze allowing stealth rolls in the matrix, program ratings being equipment dice or in the case of offensive programs, different types of weapons, so that the matrix is more streamlined and easy to grasp.

I find a bit of elegance in the current ruleset's simplistic treatment of programs, though it does sort of make hacker program selection during CharGen a bit brainless.

GM: "Which Programs would you like for your hacker?"
Hacker: "All of them."
GM: "Ok, that cost comes out to..."
Hacker: "A few thousand. I have hundreds of thousands remaining. Next."

Really my core irritation is with the flat topology -- Also, did you read the section on "The Deep Matrix"?

They outsourced it to the guy who did the Astral Planes write-up, and loaded him up with peyote for good measure.

[Lithium]

@Reason Yep I've read that, and also about the Foundation, and resonance realms, it's pretty weird stuff to be sure.

[Reason]

Cool.

I think both Boston and San Francisco may have potential. Austin is a fantastic, vibrant city in real life, but I think it lacks some of the supporting pieces and diverse settings that SF & Boston have. For one thing, it's land-locked.

Did you already settle on a city? I'm completely guilty of having skipped the first five pages of this thread -- I don't think there was anything retcon worthy for Boston, but I seem to recall a general invading San Francisco somewhere between second and third edition in a sort of half-baked plot line.

[Lithium]

I haven't picked a city yet, I am still coding base systems and such, doing a lot of data entry as well. If anything I am leaning more towards Boston than San Francisco because in 2050, the Japanese occupation of San Francisco was harsh as hell and metahumans would have a very rough time of it.

I've also considered New Orleans but, there's not a lot of big corporations based down there so not exactly a hotbed for ShadowRuns. Boston is looking like it might end up being the setting but I haven't committed yet as I'm not at the stage where I /have/ to commit to a location yet.

[JDCorley]

For the same reason I would not count on staff to tell meaningful stories, I would not require anyone to write a background on a Shadowrun place. Who could even tell if someone was lying about their background anyway? That would only become relevant if someone wanted to make it so, and they'd reveal the lie in RP anyhow.

[Groth]

@JDCorley said:

For the same reason I would not count on staff to tell meaningful stories, I would not require anyone to write a background on a Shadowrun place. Who could even tell if someone was lying about their background anyway? That would only become relevant if someone wanted to make it so, and they'd reveal the lie in RP anyhow.

I've never understood the demand for background stories. Most players don't enjoy writing them, most Staff don't enjoy reading them and at the end of the day, poses are written in a very different style from short stories so they're not a great indicator on the quality of RP. All the relevant information can be handled through a Q/A format that's less painful for both players and staff.

@Denver said:

A second reason is, frankly, to weed out those who don't have enough interest in the game to commit the time to writing. It improves the quality of RP on the grid by making it so the people who are approved are those who want to play here.

Sure, if you don't want new players to join your game, that's one way to go about it.

@Lithium said:

I am coding in a rep/notoriety bit so that people with social characters /can/ influence things more than dealing with just the Johnson and the occasional soft entry or getting better prices through a fixer.

Now for those that actually do want to improve the quality of grid RP, my experience from RfK tells me that reputation/influence systems do absolute wonders for social characters and grid RP in general.

Don't have anonymous contacts of no notability like Denver, instead have a very limited very specific list of NPCs that you can fight over with social skills. This makes access to services a limited resource and the faces/fixers that can provide access to those services become very desirable friends.

[Arkandel]

@Groth said:

I've never understood the demand for background stories. Most players don't enjoy writing them, most Staff don't enjoy reading them and at the end of the day, poses are written in a very different style from short stories so they're not a great indicator on the quality of RP. All the relevant information can be handled through a Q/A format that's less painful for both players and staff.

The only purpose BG stories ought to serve is act as sanity checks. No, your PC isn't the former Prince of Washington, D.C. and no, she's not a former wolfblood caught and taken to Arcadia then Embraced when she escaped.

Otherwise I see no reason most background stories should be more than say, 2-3 paragraphs long tops, just giving out some basic facts about the character. Anything else is usually only done because it's been the way that's done and we're creatures of habit.

[Autumn]

@Arkandel said:

Otherwise I see no reason most background stories should be more than say, 2-3 paragraphs long tops, just giving out some basic facts about the character. Anything else is usually only done because it's been the way that's done and we're creatures of habit.

I think there's probably also a substantial number of people in the hobby who just like to write backgrounds. The joke used to be that all mudders are frustrated writers, and while that's not entirely fair there's an element of truth to it.

Mind you, we pretty much do it solely for our own benefit. I don't think I have ever, even once, had staff pull an element out of one of my characters' background writeups and use it in the game.