Post by Pelch Gobwit on Apr 2, 2006 3:22:07 GMT -5
Basic Overview:
The Shadowrun game mechanics are based entirely on a 6-sided dice system.
The game is skill-based rather than class-based, but archetypes are presented in the main book to give players and gamemasters an idea of what is possible with the system.
Before the fourth edition, skill and ability checks worked like this: All actions in the game, from the use of skills to making attacks in combat, are first given a target number that reflects the difficulty of the action which is then raised or lowered by various modifying factors, such as environmental conditions, the condition of the character, the use of mechanical aids, and so forth. The character then rolls a number of dice equal to their level in the relevant skill, which then the number of dice rolled that meet or exceed the target number determines if the character is successful performing the action and to what degree of success the character has. As an example, a character with a high firearms skill not only has a better chance at hitting a target then someone with a lower ranked skill, they are also more likely to cause more damage to the target as well. Target numbers may exceed 6, in which case any dice that show a 6 have to be re-rolled (a target number of, e.g., 9 is reached by rolling a 6 followed by at least a 3; thus, a target number of 6 and one of 7 are identical). For even higher target numbers, this procedure has to be repeated; thus, an action with a target number of 20 (like attempting to procure military-degree weaponry) will only succeed if 3 successive dice rolls result in sixes, and the forth gives at least a 2. This system allows great flexibility in setting the difficulty of an action. As noted, this has been significantly changed in the fourth edition though.
In addition to this basic mechanic, players can use dice pools to add bonus dice to certain tests, though dice that are used do not refresh until the end of a turn. This adds an extra tactical element, as the player must decide where best to spend these bonus dice. For example, combat pool could be spent to improve attacks or to improve defense, or some of each. Players also have Karma Pool that can be used to reroll any dice that failed to reach the target number. Karma Pool only refreshes once a scene. The combination of Karma Pool and dice pools gives players a considerable amount of freedom to decide how important a task is to their character. Two characters with identical statistics could perform very differently on the same tasks depending on their priorities (and thus, allocation of dice pools and karma pool). This also has been changed in the fourth edition.
Shadowrun's original dice system has been cited as a major influence in the development of White Wolf's original Storyteller System. The new Storyteller System from the new World of Darkness then influenced the new dice system in the fourth edition of Shadowrun.
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Archetypes
Although the skill system is freeform, certain combinations of skills and equipment work well together. This combination of specialization in skill and equipment is known as an archetype. The most notable archetypes are Street Samurai, characters who have heavily augmented their bodies with cyberware and bioware and focus on physical combat; Adepts, characters who have magical abilities that increase their physical combat abilities; Deckers or Hackers who are experts at manipulating computer networks; Riggers who augment their brains to achieve fine control over vehicles and drones; and Magicians who cast spells and can view emotions and call spirits from astral space.
Some people complain that Shadowrun separates different types of characters too far: Street Sams are useless in computing; Deckers are useless in magical encounters; Magicians can't drive well. Each specialty seems so far removed from the others that it appears difficult to write an adventure which involves all the players at the same time.
However, the archetypes are not character classes: the player is allowed to cross boundaries. Restrictions are not imposed by the system itself, but by the player's specializations. Because character-building resources are limited, the player has to weigh which game resource (magic, computers, combat, etc.) he wants to specialize in and which he has to neglect. This allows high character customization while still ensuring that characters are viable in the setting.
[edit]
Character Creation
The fourth edition of Shadowrun uses a point-based character creation system reminiscent of GURPS; previous editions had optional point-based creation systems and instead used a priority system where the player ranked the character's relative strengths in each of five areas (race, attributes, skills, magic, and resources) and received points to spend or benefits in each area depending on the priority. The point-based creation systems handle character creation in stages that could be compared to the prior versions' priorities, but the point-based system allows for further specialization (e.g., huge amounts of skills and very little magic or cyber). The point-based system is slightly more difficult than the priority system.
Shadowrun characters are created with contacts, friends and acquaintances who will usually help the character out. The contacts system makes it quite easy for players to acquire the use of skills that their characters don't have, albeit at a price, a radical departure from most role-playing games.
[edit]
Karma
As the game progresses, players will be awarded Karma points. These points are usually added to a total called Good Karma, which can be used to boost attributes and skills. Skills that are already well-developed cost more Good Karma than skills which are undeveloped, which helps encourage specialized characters to become more flexible by spending Good Karma on weaker attributes. This advancement-buying system is much more organic than level-based systems (as made ubiquitous by Dungeons & Dragons), though not all roleplayers agree that is necessarily a good thing. Karma also makes characters more powerful in general because every tenth (or twentieth for metahumans) point is added to the Karma Pool instead of Good Karma. The Karma Pool allows players to re-roll dice or "purchase" additional dice in certain situations. Karma can even be used to avoid certain death, but it costs all Good Karma and Karma Pool points.
[edit]
Fourth Edition Changes
With the new edition, major changes to the rules system were adopted.
Out of the original six attributes (Body, Quickness, Strength, Charisma, Intelligence, and Willpower), Quickness was broken into Agility and Reaction, while Intelligence was broken into Intuition and Logic. A new attribute called Edge was introduced to replace Karma Pool. Instead of starting from a base, characters buy their Magic attribute like a normal attribute.
The initiative system was modified to only affect the order of actions, not the number of actions, during one turn. The number of actions taken by a character are determined by implants and magic but not rolling dice.
Skills were changed from the target number system to a "hits" system. The target number is fixed at 5, and to complete a skill test, a player takes a number of six-sided dice equal to the skill and its linked Attribute, and rolls them, counting the number of dice that show 5 or 6 as "hits". The number of "hits" are compared to a pre-determined amount set by the GM for the roll with success based on whether the appropriate number of "hits" was equaled or exceeded. In addition, dice pools were removed, eliminating most of the tactical allocation of dice during combat, spellcasting, hacking, and other activities. These changes speed up the resolution of skill tests and combat.
Rules for combat, magic, hacking, and other activities were changed to accommodate the new skill system. The modified rules are typically similar in outline, but the details are necessarily different.
Since the rules in the Fourth Edition are mechanically dissimilar to those in earlier editions, balance issues differ between editions. Characters from previous editions do not easily convert to the new edition with their strengths and weaknesses intact.
There were a few changes to the fictional setting in the Fourth Edition. The main premises remained unchanged while the timeline advanced by five years. 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 to join their teammates physically rather than provide matrix backup from a remote location, and makes coordinating and integrating online and real-world actions easier for the GM.
[edit]
Flaws
There have been complaints that cybertechnology in the Shadowrun game system makes very little sense. Because of the strict rules that make cyberware difficult for the character to have, it is far less likely that someone will give their character enhancements like full cyberlimbs rather than alternatives like bioware and magic. This is a problem because cyberware, especially the obvious cyber-limb kind, is a staple of the cyberpunk genre. However, this was less of a problem in the third edition, where the increase in functionality for cyberlimbs made them more appealing to both "trick" characters and more general street samurai. Due to the limit on cyberware/bioware imposed by the Essence rating, and the open development system, cyberware tends to have an "early power, not much late development" tone, versus a slower-developing but potentially much more powerful magic-oriented character.
The name theoretical troll was used to identify one of the inherent flaws in a previous edition release of the game. It referred to the fact that a player could select a Troll as a starting character and, through manipulation of rules, could make the equivalent of a walking, indestructible artillery platform, through various methods. Trolls were known for extremely high combat statistics (Body and Strength) which allowed players to abuse the system in ways it wasn't designed for.
The first edition of the game is notable for an infamous flaw in the ballistic combat system that made even the most powerful firearms all but useless against characters wearing even moderate body armor. With the second edition of the game, the combat system was overhauled so that even with armor, firearms still posed as a potentially deadly threat, especially in the hands of a skilled character.
Another problem that cropped up first in the first edition and fixed incrementally through subsequent editions were the complicated rules involving grenades. Before the addition of rules for the effects of blast against barriers in the second edition, there was a common joke among players that, given a horrible roll by a GM, one could place a baby in a box with a live grenade and the baby would come out unscathed.
The Shadowrun game mechanics are based entirely on a 6-sided dice system.
The game is skill-based rather than class-based, but archetypes are presented in the main book to give players and gamemasters an idea of what is possible with the system.
Before the fourth edition, skill and ability checks worked like this: All actions in the game, from the use of skills to making attacks in combat, are first given a target number that reflects the difficulty of the action which is then raised or lowered by various modifying factors, such as environmental conditions, the condition of the character, the use of mechanical aids, and so forth. The character then rolls a number of dice equal to their level in the relevant skill, which then the number of dice rolled that meet or exceed the target number determines if the character is successful performing the action and to what degree of success the character has. As an example, a character with a high firearms skill not only has a better chance at hitting a target then someone with a lower ranked skill, they are also more likely to cause more damage to the target as well. Target numbers may exceed 6, in which case any dice that show a 6 have to be re-rolled (a target number of, e.g., 9 is reached by rolling a 6 followed by at least a 3; thus, a target number of 6 and one of 7 are identical). For even higher target numbers, this procedure has to be repeated; thus, an action with a target number of 20 (like attempting to procure military-degree weaponry) will only succeed if 3 successive dice rolls result in sixes, and the forth gives at least a 2. This system allows great flexibility in setting the difficulty of an action. As noted, this has been significantly changed in the fourth edition though.
In addition to this basic mechanic, players can use dice pools to add bonus dice to certain tests, though dice that are used do not refresh until the end of a turn. This adds an extra tactical element, as the player must decide where best to spend these bonus dice. For example, combat pool could be spent to improve attacks or to improve defense, or some of each. Players also have Karma Pool that can be used to reroll any dice that failed to reach the target number. Karma Pool only refreshes once a scene. The combination of Karma Pool and dice pools gives players a considerable amount of freedom to decide how important a task is to their character. Two characters with identical statistics could perform very differently on the same tasks depending on their priorities (and thus, allocation of dice pools and karma pool). This also has been changed in the fourth edition.
Shadowrun's original dice system has been cited as a major influence in the development of White Wolf's original Storyteller System. The new Storyteller System from the new World of Darkness then influenced the new dice system in the fourth edition of Shadowrun.
[edit]
Archetypes
Although the skill system is freeform, certain combinations of skills and equipment work well together. This combination of specialization in skill and equipment is known as an archetype. The most notable archetypes are Street Samurai, characters who have heavily augmented their bodies with cyberware and bioware and focus on physical combat; Adepts, characters who have magical abilities that increase their physical combat abilities; Deckers or Hackers who are experts at manipulating computer networks; Riggers who augment their brains to achieve fine control over vehicles and drones; and Magicians who cast spells and can view emotions and call spirits from astral space.
Some people complain that Shadowrun separates different types of characters too far: Street Sams are useless in computing; Deckers are useless in magical encounters; Magicians can't drive well. Each specialty seems so far removed from the others that it appears difficult to write an adventure which involves all the players at the same time.
However, the archetypes are not character classes: the player is allowed to cross boundaries. Restrictions are not imposed by the system itself, but by the player's specializations. Because character-building resources are limited, the player has to weigh which game resource (magic, computers, combat, etc.) he wants to specialize in and which he has to neglect. This allows high character customization while still ensuring that characters are viable in the setting.
[edit]
Character Creation
The fourth edition of Shadowrun uses a point-based character creation system reminiscent of GURPS; previous editions had optional point-based creation systems and instead used a priority system where the player ranked the character's relative strengths in each of five areas (race, attributes, skills, magic, and resources) and received points to spend or benefits in each area depending on the priority. The point-based creation systems handle character creation in stages that could be compared to the prior versions' priorities, but the point-based system allows for further specialization (e.g., huge amounts of skills and very little magic or cyber). The point-based system is slightly more difficult than the priority system.
Shadowrun characters are created with contacts, friends and acquaintances who will usually help the character out. The contacts system makes it quite easy for players to acquire the use of skills that their characters don't have, albeit at a price, a radical departure from most role-playing games.
[edit]
Karma
As the game progresses, players will be awarded Karma points. These points are usually added to a total called Good Karma, which can be used to boost attributes and skills. Skills that are already well-developed cost more Good Karma than skills which are undeveloped, which helps encourage specialized characters to become more flexible by spending Good Karma on weaker attributes. This advancement-buying system is much more organic than level-based systems (as made ubiquitous by Dungeons & Dragons), though not all roleplayers agree that is necessarily a good thing. Karma also makes characters more powerful in general because every tenth (or twentieth for metahumans) point is added to the Karma Pool instead of Good Karma. The Karma Pool allows players to re-roll dice or "purchase" additional dice in certain situations. Karma can even be used to avoid certain death, but it costs all Good Karma and Karma Pool points.
[edit]
Fourth Edition Changes
With the new edition, major changes to the rules system were adopted.
Out of the original six attributes (Body, Quickness, Strength, Charisma, Intelligence, and Willpower), Quickness was broken into Agility and Reaction, while Intelligence was broken into Intuition and Logic. A new attribute called Edge was introduced to replace Karma Pool. Instead of starting from a base, characters buy their Magic attribute like a normal attribute.
The initiative system was modified to only affect the order of actions, not the number of actions, during one turn. The number of actions taken by a character are determined by implants and magic but not rolling dice.
Skills were changed from the target number system to a "hits" system. The target number is fixed at 5, and to complete a skill test, a player takes a number of six-sided dice equal to the skill and its linked Attribute, and rolls them, counting the number of dice that show 5 or 6 as "hits". The number of "hits" are compared to a pre-determined amount set by the GM for the roll with success based on whether the appropriate number of "hits" was equaled or exceeded. In addition, dice pools were removed, eliminating most of the tactical allocation of dice during combat, spellcasting, hacking, and other activities. These changes speed up the resolution of skill tests and combat.
Rules for combat, magic, hacking, and other activities were changed to accommodate the new skill system. The modified rules are typically similar in outline, but the details are necessarily different.
Since the rules in the Fourth Edition are mechanically dissimilar to those in earlier editions, balance issues differ between editions. Characters from previous editions do not easily convert to the new edition with their strengths and weaknesses intact.
There were a few changes to the fictional setting in the Fourth Edition. The main premises remained unchanged while the timeline advanced by five years. 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 to join their teammates physically rather than provide matrix backup from a remote location, and makes coordinating and integrating online and real-world actions easier for the GM.
[edit]
Flaws
There have been complaints that cybertechnology in the Shadowrun game system makes very little sense. Because of the strict rules that make cyberware difficult for the character to have, it is far less likely that someone will give their character enhancements like full cyberlimbs rather than alternatives like bioware and magic. This is a problem because cyberware, especially the obvious cyber-limb kind, is a staple of the cyberpunk genre. However, this was less of a problem in the third edition, where the increase in functionality for cyberlimbs made them more appealing to both "trick" characters and more general street samurai. Due to the limit on cyberware/bioware imposed by the Essence rating, and the open development system, cyberware tends to have an "early power, not much late development" tone, versus a slower-developing but potentially much more powerful magic-oriented character.
The name theoretical troll was used to identify one of the inherent flaws in a previous edition release of the game. It referred to the fact that a player could select a Troll as a starting character and, through manipulation of rules, could make the equivalent of a walking, indestructible artillery platform, through various methods. Trolls were known for extremely high combat statistics (Body and Strength) which allowed players to abuse the system in ways it wasn't designed for.
The first edition of the game is notable for an infamous flaw in the ballistic combat system that made even the most powerful firearms all but useless against characters wearing even moderate body armor. With the second edition of the game, the combat system was overhauled so that even with armor, firearms still posed as a potentially deadly threat, especially in the hands of a skilled character.
Another problem that cropped up first in the first edition and fixed incrementally through subsequent editions were the complicated rules involving grenades. Before the addition of rules for the effects of blast against barriers in the second edition, there was a common joke among players that, given a horrible roll by a GM, one could place a baby in a box with a live grenade and the baby would come out unscathed.