Aha, found it! The listing of the top 10 megacorps does list their stats as of 2080 for the 6e book.
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How are the Matrix rules in this edition? I’ve heard they’ve thought about making them integrated with the rest of the group better to avoid the “The Decker is off doing their adventure that kinda-sorta parallels the main group.” even it means expedients like requiring on-site access instead of working from the comfort of one’s home.
From what I’ve read of them (I’ve sadly not had as much free time as I’d like to really tear through the book apart from spot-checking some things for discussions like the above), it’s all integrated into the same “time stream”. Matrix no longer happens at 10x/30x/50x/whatever the speed of everything else. The speed of taking one Matrix Major action is the same as taking a Major action in combat outside of the Matrix.
In the last edition, this was imagined as trying to move the decker from a “parked in a building 3 blocks away doing the hacking thing” to a “bring the decker along so he can do things like hack the enemy’s guns on the fly”, which unfortunately didn’t work quite as intended because you spent more time trying to get access to the gun than you would just shooting the bastard.
This edition seems like it streamlines that a little further by removing the Marks system, but you’re still probably gonna be looking at more of a “Decker is hacking the computer behind everyone while the rest of the team keeps him from getting shot” than a “decker is bricking guns and cyberware on the fly”, since it’ll still probably take at least 2-3 actions to get access to any given device and do something to it.
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The Shadowrun Returns cRPG variant mostly worked for decking: Deckers would access a point and you’d lose direct control of them in the ‘real’ world, then you’d play a special ‘level’ with the decker that represented the cyberspace region. It got tweaked for each of the three games, but I think in Hong Kong you did get 2 or 3 ‘turns’ per Cyberspace Turn to 1 “Realspace” turn. That sounds good, but distances weren’t consistent between them so it was similar to 1:1 in actual practice: You’d deck in and have to spend action points to start helper programs and use them to do a combat sweep on an area so you can proceed.
One snag in the HK version is they did add a small ‘twitch’ aspect to it in that if the alarm wasn’t sounded you’d have drone ICE move around set tracks and you’d need to move carefully to avoid visible vision cones.
Not realistic, but I don’t know of a game that is. The SNES Shadowrun was arguably as realistic…
Yeah, the Shadowrun Returns way of doing it is much closer to older Shadowrun 2e/3e playstyle (as evidenced by their use of Quickness instead of Agility like 4e onward did). 4e did sort of tend to have the “decker minigame” problem despite them starting to move towards unifying all that, but it was kind of ruined by the removal of cyberdecks in favor of commlinks. 5e was another step closer, and 6e seems like a kind of “refinement” of 5e’s system and cleanup of them. Though, again, I’m willing to bet there’s something hiding in there that’s on about the same level as some of the other major issues people have spotted with the book, and from what I hear Technomancers still kind of get the short end of the stick.
Oh, man. I should dig out that Shadowrun story I was writing for you guys and play it out some more. It had very little to do with the rules, and more to do with how I thought the game should ‘feel’.
I was in a D&D adventure by email and all of the other players thought that I was a pro writer just playing with them.
Yeah. I might just do that. I have the time at work.
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Whatever happened to the game you were running on the boards? That was fun.
It was less of a game than it was a fun writing exercise and escapist slash fiction.
It was still fun.
Oh yeah! That was so much fun. I still have all the files, somewhere…
I still have it, but would want to rewrite it a bit. I didn’t get a good response from the original first-person perspective for each character. It was interesting to do, but I think I’d like to put it more into a readable “story” format. On re-reading, I found that the details were difficult to grasp and probably unnecessary. It’s just a huge organizational wank anyway. I love sorting out details for things, and this was that.
@e4tmyl33t, do you feel like this version of Shadowrun is essentially playable out of the main book? A complaint with previous editions I remember hearing is subsystems that felt unplayable without the inevitable (for the 90s/early 2000s) add-on book.
@balance For the most part, yes. There’s one glaringly obvious thing I would houserule (the cyberware Body/damage soak issue I discovered and posted about later in my comparison thread), because if that was left as-is, Street Samurai couldn’t exist. They’d be mulch the instant combat started, which is pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of the point of a street sam.
There are a few systems which, to my understanding, will be IMPROVED with further splatbooks (one I’m kind of looking forward to is the rumored “modular magic system”, where you can slot together descriptors to make custom spells), but from my readings through the Matrix system, the Magic system, and the basic Combat system, while there are some quirks (like the new Attack Power vs. Defense Rating mechanics for generating Edge, and armor only affects Defense Rating instead of damage soak) they aren’t really game-breakers.
Mind you, this is all entirely based simply on a read-through. I haven’t actually gotten to sit down and PLAY it yet, so it’s possible that a system that LOOKS logical or straightforward may be anything but once you sit some people down and start slinging dice.
Hooray, Catalyst has gotten around to placing the “preorder” catalog item up for the 6e rulebook in their own store, which also includes the purchase option for the PDF, so I was able to finally redeem my GenCon code and obtain my PDF copy. It does seem they integrated the errata so far into the PDF, but that does kinda mean that either the “preorder” is for another printing of the book that includes this (which means I have what is essentially a “first draft” copy, which kinda sucks), or that they’re not bothering to update the print copy, in which case why bother buying one if it includes wrong information?
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Hopefully it’s updated, even if it’s basically a page of errata in the back.
Catalyst still does ‘real’ print runs, not Print on Demand, I assume?
As far as I know, Catalyst still does full print runs, which makes me think that even though the print books aren’t gonna actually be available til October (apart from those 800 of us or so that got one from GenCon) it’ll still probably be the unedited version, since getting print stuff up and running takes a lot of lead time.
Revisiting this a bit, as there’s been some more time for some more things to be uncovered. This edition (at least as printed in the initial printing I got from GenCon) is starting to look more and more unplayable.
Additional items discovered:
- Ammo table is completely missing rifle and machine gun ammo.
- Medkit table in the equipment section lists that medkits are purchased with a rating. This rating is used precisely nowhere. There are other gear items that exhibit this issue as well.
- Armor is completely pointless, since all it does it potentially give you extra Edge. You’re likely better off being in combat in a bikini than bothering to put on armor.
- Equipping Bone Lacing makes your Unarmed damage go down, since it’s now a flat amount.
- Speaking of Unarmed damage, the book doesn’t actually spell out what Unarmed damage actually is…except for a quick reference in the melee subsection for Grappling, where it shows the formula.
- Wild Die section (mentioned right after Edge) says that certain gear or spells or qualities might give you a Wild Die in certain circumstances, which is an extra die you roll along with your dice pool. A 6 counts as 3 hits, a 1 cancels all 5s rolled, and 2, 3, and 4 do nothing. No gear, spells, or qualities actually use it.
- Priorities have been determined to be kinda broken. Somewhat less so than some previous editions, but (for example) if you’re planning to play a mage, it’s better to buy a lower Magic rating and then use extra points from elsewhere to buy up the stat and any additional spells than it is to just get high Magic right out of the Priorities table.
- Matrix section still has some sections referencing Grids, which existed in 5th Edition but don’t exist in 6th.
It’s bad enough that Roll4It, who were doing a Youtube series called Twilight Sins, which was basically a livestreamed/recorded set of 6e playthroughs decided recently that they just can’t continue with the system as is. They made a video detailing a lot of the issues above and more, which you can see here if you’re willing to watch them talk for a couple hours. (or an hour at 2x speed)
Ouch. That’s painfully bad from what it sounds. Like, it sounds worse than the actual “Playtest Edition” Pathfinder 2 release which was, as stated, intended as a printed copy of the Playtest rules for people who wanted to play a broken game. (I think they pulled out some entire mechanics that didn’t make the cut in that case.)
Yeah. The longer this goes on and more people analyze this book, it’s painfully clear that this has, indeed, suffered Catalyst Syndrome, where it wasn’t put together well, wasn’t edited, wasn’t playtested by anyone who wasn’t already familiar with stuff from previous editions, and wasn’t proofread.
Honestly, at this point, if I wanted to start up another Shadowrun game, I might just go back to 4th Edition and houserule in cyberdecks somehow…
I did the base mission as a playtest at GenCon. I was a decker and sat in the van at the target site and hacked cameras and alarms. This was easier to do since I had hacked in earlier and left a back door and accessed that each time with only one roll. Then I had the same access I had given myself before and just flicked the cameras into showing old episodes of Barney.