Recommend me a p&p RPG

[The Dark]

So, I decided to do some reading up on 4th edition:

The largest change in setting was the addition of a global wireless matrix that allows people to have augmented reality displays: visual overlays on real-world scenes. This encourages hackers and technomancers to join their teammates physically rather than provide matrix backup from a remote location, a change designed to make coordinating and integrating online and real-world actions easier for the GM.

Um.... ok. And this is probably the least of the pain. There's now a set target number? So, shooting in the dark, gravely injured, from cover, shooting at someone in cover, I only need to roll a 5 to hit? I was considering buying the 4th edition books just for some reading material, but no.

You'd need a 5 to hit, but you'd be rolling somewhere around 15 dice less than your skill level (-6 for darkness, -1 for shooting from cover, -4 for shooting into good cover, probably -3 or so if gravely wounded). Given that the best shooter of the pregenerated characters in the main book has 11 dice in pistols, and the highest skills in a firearm is 22 (10 Agility for an elf, 10 skill if you have Aptitude and the maximum modifier, +2 if you specialize in a particular type of weapon), and the most skilled gunman in the world gets 7 dice against his opponent's defense pool, which will be 3 or 4 dice on average.

[dworkin]

If you can get your hands on it, Star Frontiers for science fiction (TSR, early 1980s) is a fairly good one, quick and easy to play and fun. Obviously you can change aspects of it with house rules and by introducing new equipment. The original game was pretty low tech compared to something like SW, but that can easily be handwaved away. The Knight Hawks expansion that introduced space combat and ships is much less playable than the main game, but it was fairly easy to change some aspects to it to allow for fast-paced, lethal, action with both fighters and capital ships. We got 15 years of fun out of that.

Pretty much everything for Star Frontiers is available here. It's also worth noting that the alien races were recycled for the Spelljammer setting in AD&D.

Runs off rejoicing. Then realises getting friends to consider playing another game may be up there with curing meth addiction.

[Raxmei]

Um.... ok. And this is probably the least of the pain. There's now a set target number? So, shooting in the dark, gravely injured, from cover, shooting at someone in cover, I only need to roll a 5 to hit? I was considering buying the 4th edition books just for some reading material, but no.

Floating target numbers are falling out of fashion in dice pool systems in favor of modifying the dice pool. White Wolf already made the transition to fixed target numbers starting with Exalted and kept it up in the new World of Darkness.

[Serafina]

Um.... ok. And this is probably the least of the pain. There's now a set target number? So, shooting in the dark, gravely injured, from cover, shooting at someone in cover, I only need to roll a 5 to hit? I was considering buying the 4th edition books just for some reading material, but no.

Floating target numbers are falling out of fashion in dice pool systems in favor of modifying the dice pool. White Wolf already made the transition to fixed target numbers starting with Exalted and kept it up in the new World of Darkness.

And it works. It is easier, better to visualize and works just as well. You can simply have a number of dice equal to your pool and then add/subtract dice according to modifiers - and then roll just these dice.

Generally, SR 4.0 is waay better than the previous editions IMO, at least from a gameplay perspective.

[TheFeniX]

Ok, based on that I might actually pick it up and give it a read. One thing I liked about Shadowrun was that cover was always so useful. In palladium systems and a few others, it was more a nuisance, but entire fire-fights in Shadowrun could be run by using suppressing fire to keep heads down until someone did something stupid and the character who was holding action could pop a good shot off. Other than that, good luck hitting anything. I enjoyed it so much because it wasn't all "you hit me, then I hit you," including the melee combat.

[Eleas]

(Preliminary apologies to TheFeniX for me being a massive douchebag to him in a previous thread. I've since learned humility, or so I like to think.)

This thread has been a bit vexing to me, because I know you wanted a simple P&P game, and the one I most want to recommend right now - the Reflex system - is pretty crunchy. For what it does, however, it's a beautiful game, and (I think) only needs a bit of tweaking to be perfect for any realistic-type campaign. I've only read the Twilight 2013 implementation, which is admittedly extremely militaristic.

D&D 4th edition is pretty impressive for playing the way it's meant to be played. Retooling it significantly may be difficult, simply because it focuses so hard on things that are indelibly D&D. An expensive choice, but depending on what you want it can be worth the money.

As for general systems, there's a Swedish one called Noir that I'm retooling at the moment, and it's really good. This is not helpful at all in the context of this thread, so I think I'll once again plug FUDGE instead. Of course, FUDGE is more a game kit, so you'll have to put it together yourself for it to do what you want it to do. Fudge can be downloaded free of charge.

Star Wars Saga Edition is a bloody masterpiece, but you more or less have to gather all erratas and the like before it works as you want it. A very slick, smooth rendition of the d20 engine. If you dislike how far D&D 4e takes it and feel 3.5 is not enough, the SAGA system may be your sweet spot. Less expensive than D&D 4E, or was - it's now out of print. Get the core book if you want to have a go at it; no other book is required.

As for settings, I love CJ Carella's Witchcraft as much as I dislike the system it uses (Unisystem). It's free for download in PDF form. The world can pretty much be described as an urban fantasy setting, reminiscent in atmosphere of The Dresden Files, Sandman, Hellblazer, Supernatural, and a dash of John Carpenter's Vampires. If you can ignore the slight emphasis on the Wicce (who are just a bit too boringly strait-laced for my tastes), Witchcraft is an awesome setting to build on.

[ShadowDragon8685]

A caveat about SAGA, it doesn't model the hero who both flies and kicks ass on the ground very well. You can either do one of them at the expected and nessessarily heroic level of performance, or you can be "decent" at both of them if you take the kind of ground hero whose feats are mostly applicable to space combat (like a gunslinger of some sort,) or you can be mediocre at best at both of them if you take the kind of hero whose feats don't apply very well to space combat, like a Jedi or any other kind of melee warrior, or a Noble or something.

If you want to fix this, you'll need some houseruling. Personally, I think the fastest, quickest and probably bestest way to do this is to have everyone maintain two character sheets with the same stats, trained skills and class choices, but allow them to entirely retool their feats and class ability picks (and if applicable, Force power choices,) for use in vehicular combat. (Force Choke isn't very useful in a starfighter, whereas Battle Meditation might be, for example; and technically there's nothing I am presently aware of stopping Move Object from working at starship scale squares in vehicular combat.)

[Eleas]

A caveat about SAGA, it doesn't model the hero who both flies and kicks ass on the ground very well. You can either do one of them at the expected and nessessarily heroic level of performance,

I don't see that as a given, necessarily. In fact, I think Star Wars SAGA is a lot better at allowing jack of all trades characters to be decently competitive. Besides, asking to play "the hero who both flies and kicks ass on the ground very well" (I'm not being sarcastic here, but you were specific about that) seems to imply a general level of competence that is simply higher than that of the other heroes. Or are you perhaps speaking of there being an arbitrary line drawn between starship combat and character scale combat, in terms of resources? If so, then I suppose I can sorta see your point. I still maintain that SAGA is perhaps the most jack-of-all-trade - friendly iteration of the d20 system, but there are some slight curiosities inherent to the system. Nothing the players and GM can't smooth out if they watch out for it.

Also, I don't see what these "expected and necessarily heroic" levels of competence would be. Not that I'm disagreeing with you out of hand here, but I'd like it if you went into more depth about your meaning.

or you can be "decent" at both of them if you take the kind of ground hero whose feats are mostly applicable to space combat (like a gunslinger of some sort,) or you can be mediocre at best at both of them if you take the kind of hero whose feats don't apply very well to space combat, like a Jedi or any other kind of melee warrior, or a Noble or something.

Yeah, it's true enough that a predominantly Noble-classed character would have a more difficult time in space combat. I have to disagree with it being crippling, however. For instance, a Jedi can be made a fairly lethal flyer by simply taking the Force pilot talent.

If you want to fix this, you'll need some houseruling. Personally, I think the fastest, quickest and probably bestest way to do this is to have everyone maintain two character sheets with the same stats, trained skills and class choices, but allow them to entirely retool their feats and class ability picks (and if applicable, Force power choices,) for use in vehicular combat.

...whatever floats your boat. If you like that, you should do it. For myself I personally would never go this route, and cannot envision it ever being necessary in my campaign. I've never seen combat encounters play out in any SAGA campaign I've played where you had to be so utterly adapted, stats-wise, to a given arena simply to survive. (The nearest I came to that was a single-player campaign, with a Jedi padawan who couldn't fly worth shit being attacked by pirates).

(Force Choke isn't very useful in a starfighter, whereas Battle Meditation might be, for example; and technically there's nothing I am presently aware of stopping Move Object from working at starship scale squares in vehicular combat.)

As you say, Move Object works in space combat, and apparently that's deliberate. There are always odd parts to any system, however; look up the range of Battle Meditation, for instance. Now consider a situation where the player is on a station, facing a large space battle through a vast viewport. The player uses Battle Meditation, and can influence a good part of the entire fleet engagement. The same Battle Meditation does not, however, extend to the edges of the room the player's in.

[TheFeniX]

(Preliminary apologies to TheFeniX for me being a massive douchebag to him in a previous thread. I've since learned humility, or so I like to think.)

Eh?

D&D 4th edition is pretty impressive for playing the way it's meant to be played. Retooling it significantly may be difficult, simply because it focuses so hard on things that are indelibly D&D. An expensive choice, but depending on what you want it can be worth the money.

Ok, I haven't touched AD&D since 2.0 because we all got kind of burned-out on the setting. Planescape was fun to run, but everyone but me felt a little lost.

I personally just got burned out on the system itself. I forgave THAC0 because it worked for what it did (or something...), but D&D and Palladium (Rifts and Robotech especially) really burned me out on D20 in general (roll to hit, dodge, hit, dodge, more than a few missles, roll with impact). Players really hated dodging all the fucking time and I can't blame them.

The likely-hood of me getting a group together is slim (as well as my ability to not jack this guys thread), but I'm going to ask: how does 4.0 read? Shadowrun and it's source-books always had good in-universe commentary mixed in with the rules. That's one of the reasons I enjoyed it, because by learning the rules, I also learned more about the setting and it's inhabitants.

So, is D&D 4.0 just going to be me reading through a stereo instruction manual? And did SR keep with the snark in their new sourcebooks?

[ShadowDragon8685]

I don't see that as a given, necessarily. In fact, I think Star Wars SAGA is a lot better at allowing jack of all trades characters to be decently competitive. Besides, asking to play "the hero who both flies and kicks ass on the ground very well" (I'm not being sarcastic here, but you were specific about that) seems to imply a general level of competence that is simply higher than that of the other heroes. Or are you perhaps speaking of there being an arbitrary line drawn between starship combat and character scale combat, in terms of resources? If so, then I suppose I can sorta see your point. I still maintain that SAGA is perhaps the most jack-of-all-trade - friendly iteration of the d20 system, but there are some slight curiosities inherent to the system. Nothing the players and GM can't smooth out if they watch out for it.

For everything except combat, this is generally the truth. A mid-level to high-level hero can be more or less as competent at a given skill that he has no formal training in as a specialized character at it, with the caveat that some applications of any given skill (like the demolitions applications of Mechanics) are trained-only. This lets the level 15 Jedi who's never been formally trained at Mechanics stand a decent chance at repairing his landspeeder in a cave, with a box of scraps. So a smuggler with a fair number of levels to his name will still be able to beat up a CL 2 nonheroic Stormtrooper with his bare hands by making basic attacks.

And in terms of combat, this is sort-of true on the ground. A medium-high level hero's basic competency from BAB and damage bonuses will let him overcome the penalties and kick some newbie/mook/extra ass in a form of combat he's not trained in - one of the specific examples of this used on the WotC forums by Gary Sarli, for example, was the time in RotJ when Luke pulled a random mook out of the sail barge. G.M. Sarli specifically called this out as Luke making an untrained unarmed attack, doing far more damage to the guy than he had hit points by virtue of the guy being an unimportant extra, and stunted it as pulling him out and tossing him down the pit instead of punching his lights out.

However, this breaks down once you start to face foes of your own level. Nobody really expects anyone to kill a rancor with their bare hands, but if the person in question is, say, a Wookie martial artist, it closes in on the realm of possibility, of heroic battle; the smuggler probably shouldn't do that. That's okay, though; if he wanted to kill Rancors with his bare hands, he should probably have learnt the ancient art of Rancor Castration (from the people who brought you How To Castrate Straha In Five Easy Motions).

The problem is that in Star Wars, those who are heroic on the ground are very often those who are also very, very heroic in space. Wedge Antillies, for example, is without a doubt the finest fighter pilot ever to fly. Certainly, Vader and Skywalker would've stood a chance of taking him in a dogfight, but then the canon holds Jedi up as being superior in everything (a point of contention later*,) and he would've definitely given them a run for their money. He's also the only man to be worth more than one Death Star silhouette on his cockpit. But, he was also a damn, damn fine commando on the ground. The same is true over and over, in the numbers of Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron, as well as with the legendary Jedi heroes.

It even tries to make allusions to this, stating that while as legendary starfighter pilots go, Obi-Wan Kenobi was not truly amongst them; however, he flew and was able to fly because that was where the action was. But the problem is that that's a very good way for a legendary hero to die an ignominious death to a random, unimportant TIE figher or Vulture droid fighter. Space combat is very deadly, and as your class bonus to defense isn't going to be eclipsing even a starfighter's armor bonus for a very, very long time, your space combat AC isn't going to be tremendously high. When the kind of damage is being thrown around that can kill your starfighter in one good damage roll without a critical, that's a problem.

It expects you to have the Vehicular Combat feat to make Piloting rolls to negate the attacks. But what's that, you say? You never Trained in pilot because you never expected to have to fly? So you can't possibly have a feat which requires it trained? Oh well, your choices are (a) risk horrible death, or (b) sit the encounter out.

An untrained hero, even a high-level one, may be able to contribute to a space battle. Certainly, his attack bonus will far eclipse an NPC pilot's, and his heroic bonus to damage won't be inconsequential because it's always added before the laser cannon or torpedo multiplier. But he will not have the survivability to make it truly worth risking a PC, let alone the heroic oomph to be the kind of guy you really want flying on your wing. To put it another way, he'll be about as effective as an elite NPC - and about as survivable. Certainly worth having along, but only if you don't really care if he gets killed.

So then, how do you model a heroic PC who's good on the ground and in space? It's not easy, you pretty much have to be a gunslinger of some sort so that your offensive feats can overlap, and a fair few Talents overlap as well if you make the right class and Talent choices. But making a Jedi Ace isn't easy, you're going to have to devote feats to being a starfighter pilot, and very few of your talents will have overlap.

In short, it becomes impossible to model a hero who's good on the ground and in space without giving him an excess of levels, and he will never be truly capable of performing up to his CL's expectations on ground or in space. Close, maybe, with the right talents and feats and classes, but never up to it.

Also, I don't see what these "expected and necessarily heroic" levels of competence would be. Not that I'm disagreeing with you out of hand here, but I'd like it if you went into more depth about your meaning.

It's definitional, my friend. Take a hero of any given CL. It's expected that he's going to be using every resource available to him to be able to resolve situations on-the-ground; every non-freebie feat to build upon his chosen resolution method, whether it be stealth, commando assault, the Force, talking, guile, whatever. It doesn't necessarily have to be combat, but it probably is; even Nobles and stuff get in on this act, with Talents that let them force enemies to surrender once they're below 1/2 HP and all; a talking resolution to a combat situation that's already begun!

Now, all of a sudden this game gets a new dimension; space combat. Or even, let's say it's not sudden at all. Let's say our noble has been splitting his attention 50/50 between buying feats that let him fly a starfighter, and his usual talking-on-the-ground method. It's true that he can still force enemy ships to surrender just as he can force stormtroopers to throw down their E-11s and put their hands behind their helmets, but he won't be able to do it as well. Half of his feats have gone into things related to flying-the-ship, and assume that roughly 1/2 of those (or 1/4 of his total feats) will be utterly inapplicable when running through an Imperial facility with a blaster in his hands, since he took the obligatory Skill Focus (Pilot) and Vehicular Combat and what-not. He may, if he's clever and his GM is very generous, manage to get away with using them by bringing a speeder bike through the facility with him, forcing the context of being blown away by heavy vehicular cannons onto the stormtroopers

But, even if he's managing to do that, he's still not going to be performing up to his CL's worth, because someone who's spent it all on one form of resolving issues - the expectation in a d20 CL system - will still be better at it than he will be.

Yeah, it's true enough that a predominantly Noble-classed character would have a more difficult time in space combat. I have to disagree with it being crippling, however. For instance, a Jedi can be made a fairly lethal flyer by simply taking the Force pilot talent.

It saves him a feat or two and lets him apply his UtF skill training and Focus on Piloting checks, yes. However, it's a feat that is otherwise useless. It's only applicability is to vehicular combat, it won't help him in a lightsaber duel or a Force duel with a Sith Lord unless the duel happens to be taking place from the back of a speeder bike! Which is, admittedly, very Awesome, but you can't count on every Sith Lord being obliging enough to (a) get on a speeder bike of his own and joust with you, or (b) stand still and let you make ride-by attacks. He'll either run into the kind of quarters where your bike will be detrimental, not advantageous, or set off an EMP or use Drain Energy or otherwise crush or disable your bike.

...whatever floats your boat. If you like that, you should do it. For myself I personally would never go this route, and cannot envision it ever being necessary in my campaign. I've never seen combat encounters play out in any SAGA campaign I've played where you had to be so utterly adapted, stats-wise, to a given arena simply to survive. (The nearest I came to that was a single-player campaign, with a Jedi padawan who couldn't fly worth shit being attacked by pirates).

Could've gone so bad, so very fast. All it takes is one natural 20, and you either have to spend a Destiny Point or die. I pulled this on one of my players, and I had house rules in place (admittedly not this one,) intended to make them capable pilots as well as ground-pounders. He was shot by a Syck - think "crappiest little thing ever." About on-par with a TIE fighter, little heavier shielded, no better armed.

As you say, Move Object works in space combat, and apparently that's deliberate. There are always odd parts to any system, however; look up the range of Battle Meditation, for instance. Now consider a situation where the player is on a station, facing a large space battle through a vast viewport. The player uses Battle Meditation, and can influence a good part of the entire fleet engagement. The same Battle Meditation does not, however, extend to the edges of the room the player's in.

It's true, of course. But it's not always going to be that helpful; for instance, you Force Move him - to where? On the ground, if nothing else, you can rip up a hunk of ground or rip down a hunk of ceiling on someone, or grab him and toss him into same if you beat the right DCs. But in space, unless he's conveniently near to an obstacle or a ship you don't mind crunching - and assuming the other target, if mobile, doesn't succeed on a reflexive Pilot check to evade the collision - you can't do much with it. If you're on a space transport, maybe pull him back into optimal range for your gunners, but that's about it.


I think it's an important house-rule, really. Star Wars is as much about starfighter combat as it is about applying lightsaber or blaster to Stormtrooper's codpieces. The easiest, quickest hack is also the one that lets the heroes experience the full range of activity. You can throw an elite squadron at them if they all have a stat sheet with their full PC resources put into fighting in space. You can give them a mission to take down that Star Destroyer.*

The inspiration for this is actually Star Wars Galaxies. No matter what you are on the ground - from a Jedi Master to an Entertainer - your capabilities in space are limited only by your (the player's) skill with a joystick, your credits (which you can get in space as well as on the ground,) and your space level, which is distinct and separate from your ground level.

*If you want players to take down capital warships and Death Stars from the cockpits of snubfighters, you're going to need to modify the rules. I personally allow players to attack any given subsystem they desire, giving any given subsystem an amount of HP equal to 1%-5% or 10% or even 20% of the ship's total HP, depending on the subsystem's importance, redundancy inherent in it, and the total amount of HP on the ship (The power generation is going to be a lot more protected and redundant than, say, the primary communications array; but it's still going to represent a far smaller fraction of the total HP on a Star Destroyer than it will on, say, a CRC-90 Corvette. Also, I don't actually let players cripple a ship just by taking out the generator, I just set the ship down to a permanent condition track modifier for being forced to reply on backup generators and batteries,) and I let them bypass the shields if they move into the capital ship's square and succeed in a roll to avoid collision +5, whilst simultaneously exceeding the capitol ship's own piloting roll. This is all inspired by Star Wars: Empire at War, by the by.



Oh, and FeniX? The guys behind SR4 had their tongue so firmly implanted in cheek that they'll need a street doc to remove it.

[Eleas]

(Preliminary apologies to TheFeniX for me being a massive douchebag to him in a previous thread. I've since learned humility, or so I like to think.)

Eh?

Well, some five years ago or so on this board I basically trolled the shit out of you for liking AD&D (and I was a prick about it). I'm honestly glad you don't remember.

Ok, I haven't touched AD&D since 2.0 because we all got kind of burned-out on the setting. Planescape was fun to run, but everyone but me felt a little lost.

I personally just got burned out on the system itself. I forgave THAC0 because it worked for what it did (or something...), but D&D and Palladium (Rifts and Robotech especially) really burned me out on D20 in general (roll to hit, dodge, hit, dodge, more than a few missles, roll with impact). Players really hated dodging all the fucking time and I can't blame them.

The change from 2.0 to 4.0 (or even from 3.5) is quite substantial. You'll find the game does not play the same way. Now, it relies on the use of Powers, of which you have At-Will (use whenever you want), Encounter (use once per encounter), and Daily (use once per day). Combat movement is more codified, and ties heavily into the powers themselves, so that a rogue with a certain power may use it to move himself, move the enemy, and impose a condition, all at the same time.

The core rulebooks (there are the traditional two of them, if you don't count the Monster Manual) give the briefest of nods to the setting, which otherwise is the purvey of the specific campaign books. The game encourages use of Wizard's own character generator, and indeed it's a good tool to have. For my own part, I found no trouble converting our own homebrew generic fantasy setting to 4th Ed.

The likely-hood of me getting a group together is slim (as well as my ability to not jack this guys thread), but I'm going to ask: how does 4.0 read? Shadowrun and it's source-books always had good in-universe commentary mixed in with the rules. That's one of the reasons I enjoyed it, because by learning the rules, I also learned more about the setting and it's inhabitants.

So, is D&D 4.0 just going to be me reading through a stereo instruction manual? And did SR keep with the snark in their new sourcebooks?

It reads pretty much without effort. It's easier to understand than 3.5 was, partially because they've obviously sunk a fair bit of money into making it unambiguous, deterministic and clear. The rules themselves follow a different principle, and are almost... object-oriented, I think the best word is. Let's put it like this: if there is something in the 4E rules, then chances are its presence is significant and quite deliberate.

As for the personal touch, wry banter, and the like, it's present, but generally crosses into inadvertent comedy. "You'll have to deal with me first, dragon!" is, for example, the tagline for the Fighter, and some of the descriptions of the powers... well, you'll probably have far more fun reinterpreting them on the fly.

The game is, however, a cracking good board-game (far better, IMHO, than the older editions; in terms of mechanical economy of rules, there's just no contest). This is not a bad thing by all means - it allows role playing and doesn't hinder it at all, it's just that it can be played without role playing whatsoever. We have an silly-adolescents-coming-of-age lighthearted fantasy campaign going on at the moment, and our shift from 3.5 to 4.0 improved the game by miles. Your mileage, though, may vary on that score.

Mostly, though, I like the game. There aren't really any blind alley classes. A wizard is potent (though less so than in 3.5)... but so is everyone else.

</threadjack>

[Eleas]

hey, ShadowDragon, I'm gonna have to go to bed. No hard feelings if I look at your post tomorrow?

[The Dark]

The likely-hood of me getting a group together is slim (as well as my ability to not jack this guys thread), but I'm going to ask: how does 4.0 read? Shadowrun and it's source-books always had good in-universe commentary mixed in with the rules. That's one of the reasons I enjoyed it, because by learning the rules, I also learned more about the setting and it's inhabitants.

So, is D&D 4.0 just going to be me reading through a stereo instruction manual? And did SR keep with the snark in their new sourcebooks?

SR has kept up the snark quotient. I have three of the new setting books (Corporate Enclaves, Shadow Havens, and Feral Cities), along with Running Wild and Vice, and the snarkiness is as good as the older Target or Shadows series (I have Target: UCAS, Target: Matrix, and all three Shadows [North America, Europe, and Asia]). Captain Chaos is gone (don't know what happened), and FastJack is running the shadows now. They've kept the tradition of posters commenting on the article, and with a few running feuds between people that don't like each other.

[Neko_Oni]

Silhouette system is my favourite. It's the system used for 3 quite nice universes.

Heavy Gear: Mecha-game, kind of realistic as far as giant robot games go. It does have an anime aesthetic in the book art, though the game play itself doesn't really reflect it.
Jovian Chronicles: Essentially Gundam. Again anime aesthetic in the game art which can be ignored for actual play (although you are still basically playing Gundam).
and Tribe 8: Low-fantasy horror setting. Very cool though the setting is pretty strange and might put some people off.

As for the system, it's fast and simple. It has a few quirks and some of the recent books are not that well proof-read or balanced. Also avoid SilCORE, the most recent rule set. It's a bit of a mess in my opinion.

Another recent favourite of mine is Qin: The Warring States. Basically a wuxia RPG, it is one of the more flavourful RPGs I've come across. Also the book itself is gorgeous. The system used is 2d10, one Yin dice, one Yang dice. The character's attributes are all elemental, Metal (combat), Water (movement), Fire (social), Wood (mental) and Earth (spiritual). Rolls are Attribute + Skill + the difference of the two dice. If you roll a double it's a Yin/Yang balance, essentially a critical. You have Chi which powers your crazy powers (wall walking, shattering pillars, blocking swords with silk scarfs, that kind of thing). The whole thing is entirely geared around wuxia though and would be basically useless for any other setting.

[ShadowDragon8685]

The likely-hood of me getting a group together is slim (as well as my ability to not jack this guys thread), but I'm going to ask: how does 4.0 read? Shadowrun and it's source-books always had good in-universe commentary mixed in with the rules. That's one of the reasons I enjoyed it, because by learning the rules, I also learned more about the setting and it's inhabitants.

So, is D&D 4.0 just going to be me reading through a stereo instruction manual? And did SR keep with the snark in their new sourcebooks?

SR has kept up the snark quotient. I have three of the new setting books (Corporate Enclaves, Shadow Havens, and Feral Cities), along with Running Wild and Vice, and the snarkiness is as good as the older Target or Shadows series (I have Target: UCAS, Target: Matrix, and all three Shadows [North America, Europe, and Asia]). Captain Chaos is gone (don't know what happened), and FastJack is running the shadows now. They've kept the tradition of posters commenting on the article, and with a few running feuds between people that don't like each other.

The canon story of what happened to CC is that when the Crash started running around everything, he and a few of the others (including FastJack) were busy trying to dump the datavaults to offline data storage so it wouldn't all be lost. When they realized that the AI or whatever-it-was was breaking through the defenses, everybody bailed at differing points, with FJ being the last to bail out, CC promising to be right behind him.

Except that "right behind him" was too slow, and CC wound up flatlined, with his conciseness sucked into the machine as a ghost in the system. And then in a monumental act of nuking the plot hook from orbit, they went and canonized the fact that the AI had no use for CC's conciseness and unceremoniously deleted him.


Laaaaaame.

[Eleas]

<snip>

I find myself in a bit of a jam. I want to continue with this discussion, but it's going to derail the thread even further. I propose either splitting the thread, or hashing it out over PM.

[TheFeniX]

Well, some five years ago or so on this board I basically trolled the shit out of you for liking AD&D (and I was a prick about it). I'm honestly glad you don't remember.

Ah, I'll let it slide then.

Except that "right behind him" was too slow, and CC wound up flatlined, with his conciseness sucked into the machine as a ghost in the system. And then in a monumental act of nuking the plot hook from orbit, they went and canonized the fact that the AI had no use for CC's conciseness and unceremoniously deleted him.

Ah man, Captain Chaos was my alt when playing Dystopia. I've only read a few of the novels, so I don't know the fluff on a lot of the plot besides what's in the older source-books. I always assume FJ and CC were part of or involved in Echo Mirage (would make them both pretty old though). But seriously, if the explanation involves Otaku, I don't want to hear it.

I'm going back to the op to shill hard for SR.

Specifically the low lethality,

Shadowrun (2.0 and 3.0) are pretty lethal settings. No matter how much "experience" you earn, how high your skills get, or how powerful you think you are, you're always one bad roll away from death or permanent damage. There are numerous ways for characters to save their asses in these situations, but most of them cost and can be used as punishment for players who willfully bite off more than they can chew. Any abuse of the system was always dealt with easily because no matter how good you think you are, when Lone Star FRT gets called (basically, the cops "hit squad" they call in when you fuck up), they're going to be hitting you hard. Characters with a flair for the dramatic just don't last long if you don't want them to.

3.0 also included optional rules to make the game even more deadly. I never had to implement rules like this because my players ate up the "infiltrate" above "blast through the front door" mentality. The core book has rules governing this and many sourcebooks go into even deeper rules.

The Campaign Books are pretty in-depth as well. I GMed one "Bottled Demon" (characters did not survive BTW) book and the amount of detail given to a bar in the beginning was so strange I read it over multiple times to make sure I wasn't missing a section on a fire-fight or something of that sort. Security, layout, how to access cameras from the matrix. All this jaz for a bar that's sole purpose was "go here, meet contact, leave."

and class (and alignment) structure.

The only "class" SR has/had is magic, but there's nothing to stop a magician from loading up on the heavy machine guns, getting cybered to the gills, and blasting away. Many source-books also cover the "way of the burnout," which is how to handle characters like this. Specifically, that losing his link to the astral is like a normal person going deaf or blind. There's a lot of adjusting to do.

There is no alignment, but I did fuck around with a home-made "morality" system that failed miserably in implementation.

I also have played WEGs Star Wars stuff, and have (but not played) their, now free, d6 fantasy and space stuff. I like WEGs d6 stuff, but the dice rolling can get cumbersome, and the pre-made spells are pretty sparse and lackluster.

SR 3.0 can definitely get bogged down in dice rolls. The combat itself was 100 some-odd pages, not including matrix combat. Rigging (basically driving with your brain) and running drones (remote controlled bots) could get hellacious. But you can always mitigate that by planning before hand or keeping a handy sheet for basic target numbers. If SR 4 cleaned this up, then more power to them. At the end of a night, I'd end up with a notebook filled margin to margin with notes, initiative charts, and little drawings of exploding heads while I bought time to "figure out some numbers" before I just had someone roll against a 6.

Most new players also forgo the magic, decking, and rigging roles, preferring Street Samurai, Mercenaries, or just guys who can sling the big guns. Physical Adepts are also an easy way to introduce magic: Pick your powers > break some necks. The spell list actually had to be cut down a bit due to power (fucking Don's brother spamming "Turns to Goo" just to fuck with me). It's unlikely you'll want for more spells in SR, but if you do, the rules concerning spell creations are/were covered in the Grimoire.

It also a nice setting because it's still our world, with a serious break from reality circa 2020 (and smaller breaks early). So, you don't have to do a whole lot of explaining about why a bunch of guys sporting the same colors all hang out at some dive bar or why there's one guy in said dive bar wearing a $2,000 suite, and no one is fucking with him. You might have to explain why piles of trash might suddenly start moving and try to kill you.

[ShadowDragon8685]

<snip>

I find myself in a bit of a jam. I want to continue with this discussion, but it's going to derail the thread even further. I propose either splitting the thread, or hashing it out over PM.

Threadsplit works for me, since it allows others to input as well, but the ball's in your court if you want to just move to PMs.

Except that "right behind him" was too slow, and CC wound up flatlined, with his conciseness sucked into the machine as a ghost in the system. And then in a monumental act of nuking the plot hook from orbit, they went and canonized the fact that the AI had no use for CC's conciseness and unceremoniously deleted him.

Ah man, Captain Chaos was my alt when playing Dystopia. I've only read a few of the novels, so I don't know the fluff on a lot of the plot besides what's in the older source-books. I always assume FJ and CC were part of or involved in Echo Mirage (would make them both pretty old though). But seriously, if the explanation involves Otaku, I don't want to hear it.

FastJack was. There's also hard serious canonized hints (but with a dash of unreliable narrator so the GM can say "not in my Seattle") that FastJack is Damian Knight. Personally, I like to think he is. Also, thanks to Leonization, old guys don't have to be old anymore.

As for the Cap, he started out as some kind of reporter or something, wound up sinking further and further into the Shadows chasing down a story, and realized that he was in too deep and couldn't surface, and didn't want to surface.

[Eleas]

Okay, new thread created.

[fnord]

Except that "right behind him" was too slow, and CC wound up flatlined, with his conciseness sucked into the machine as a ghost in the system. And then in a monumental act of nuking the plot hook from orbit, they went and canonized the fact that the AI had no use for CC's conciseness and unceremoniously deleted him.

Ah man, Captain Chaos was my alt when playing Dystopia. I've only read a few of the novels, so I don't know the fluff on a lot of the plot besides what's in the older source-books. I always assume FJ and CC were part of or involved in Echo Mirage (would make them both pretty old though). But seriously, if the explanation involves Otaku, I don't want to hear it.

FastJack was. There's also hard serious canonized hints (but with a dash of unreliable narrator so the GM can say "not in my Seattle") that FastJack is Damian Knight. Personally, I like to think he is. Also, thanks to Leonization, old guys don't have to be old anymore.

As for the Cap, he started out as some kind of reporter or something, wound up sinking further and further into the Shadows chasing down a story, and realized that he was in too deep and couldn't surface, and didn't want to surface.

In "History Lesson for the Reality Impaired", FastJack's intro/timeline setter in SR4, he says that he was born in 1999, and wasn't in EM - take with as much salt as appropriate. As for the Captain, I haven't seen anything touching on it one way or the other, and he went down with his ship in Crash 2.0. Although he ceased to be, Ancient History's released drafts (as a part of a Catalyst-freelancers dispute) intimate that the Cap isn't buggered, just resting.

For some reason , FastJack got left out of the "10 Jackpointers" PDF - in-world, a collection of dossiers Horizon has compiled on various jackpointers such as Turbo Bunny and Lyran.

[Kheitain]

I'd make a recomendation for cyberpunk myself, it's my favorite so far.

If you'd like to give it a whirl PM Norade or myself and we can get you a character whipped up for the game I'm presently running here on sd.net. We could make him/her randomly interrupt this stalement we've gotten into

[The Dark]

FastJack was. There's also hard serious canonized hints (but with a dash of unreliable narrator so the GM can say "not in my Seattle") that FastJack is Damian Knight. Personally, I like to think he is. Also, thanks to Leonization, old guys don't have to be old anymore.

As for the Cap, he started out as some kind of reporter or something, wound up sinking further and further into the Shadows chasing down a story, and realized that he was in too deep and couldn't surface, and didn't want to surface.

In "History Lesson for the Reality Impaired", FastJack's intro/timeline setter in SR4, he says that he was born in 1999, and wasn't in EM - take with as much salt as appropriate. As for the Captain, I haven't seen anything touching on it one way or the other, and he went down with his ship in Crash 2.0. Although he ceased to be, Ancient History's released drafts (as a part of a Catalyst-freelancers dispute) intimate that the Cap isn't buggered, just resting.

For some reason , FastJack got left out of the "10 Jackpointers" PDF - in-world, a collection of dossiers Horizon has compiled on various jackpointers such as Turbo Bunny and Lyran.

1999 would match Samantha Villiers' dossier on him - it was "acquired" by CC in 2061, and lists FJ as a 62-year-old Caucasian human male from the UCAS. According to Villiers: "[A] number of rumors also link FastJack to the Echo Mirage project and Ares CEO Damien Knight. In fact, some even claim that the two men are one and the same, though this is clearly ludicrous. If FastJack was involved in Echo Mirage, his connections are so deeply buried that it is unlikely they will be unearthed at any point in the future." At that point in time, the significant jackers were Anubis, FastJack, Grid Reaper, Link, Red Wraith, Silvery K, Slamm-O!, Smiling Bandit, Snow Tiger, and Michael Sutherland.