Quote from: Itachi;1137952Reducing people's arguments to absurd levels just to prove one's point won't lead the conversation nowhere.

You where the one that brought up kicking people out for the EXTREME of not learning rules. I stated REPEATEDLY that I was for streamlining. Fuck this.

I have zero interest or patience for games with more than 30 minutes of chargen. I'm cool with 45 minutes if its my very first time and I'm still trying to figure out WTF everything might be in the book. My problem isn't the time investment because I've often been happy to put 20 hours into prepping a 4 hour game, but long chargen tells me the system is making the PCs too precious.

But I've always been a low crunch / broad strokes gamer and I totally understand that heavy crunch games appeal to a certain demographic of the hobby. It not viable for one game to appeal to both groups.

However, we are very fortunate to live in the Golden Age of RPGs and SR can easily be recreated. There's probably already a few "cyberfantasy RPGs" already sitting on DriveThruRPG waiting for new players.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1137920It is if they've never even played a RPG before or aren't terribly experienced with them. But I suppose I could just reject new players out of hand.

This isn't about dismissing new players.
It is about not treating new players like a bunch of idiots and expecting them to behave like responsible people and do their share, get a rulebook*, read it, understand at least the basics and the rules pertaining to their own character and create their own characters. And helping them, of course, when there are questions (and there will be).
*Which can always be gotten for free, not everyone in a group has to buy every product.

There is a gigantic difference between a new player who is willing and eager to get to know a system and spend the time on it and a new player who just wants to sit down to get a story told, unwilling to invest any of their own time.

Quote from: Itachi;1137931There's a lot of casual players who don't have interest in knowing the rules past a superficial level.

First mistake: Don't play with casuals.
They easily ruin every conceivable hobby with their total lack of commitment.

And again, casuals != new players.
Casuals = unwilling.
New players = inexperienced.
One can be helped, the other one can't.

Quote from: Itachi;1137931people who don't have the time in their adult lives, nor the inclination, to learn complex rules of the kind you spend a whole session just to create a character. They still love the Shadowrun setting (which some met through the videogames) and woud like to continue playing.

First of all, people who don't have any time in their lives, have made the decisions to be in that situation. I'm not even talking about kids here, I've played with more than enough people with kids and they still managed to invest the time necessary to read rules and prepare their characters, and (generally) make it to all sessions, etc.
It's not a matter of "can't", it's a matter of "won't" - a matter of priorities.

If they love the setting, but not the system, then keep the setting and use some easy rules instead. Use 5E or something even simpler.
Change a few skill names, add a few skills and you're golden. It's not like the rules have to be great in the end, because your audience has proven not to care too deeply about the rules part.
Doesn't SR even have those narrative "rules" without most rules just for quick storytelling? Sounds exactly like what you need.
We used SR rules for a fantasy setting at some point, worked perfectly.

Why? Because settings are arbitrary, but a system isn't.

Quote from: Itachi;1137931What do you propose? That I kick them out for not having a deep knowledge of the rules?

I'd propose not playing casual rounds to begin with, but if you want to accomodate casuals, there are a ton of options all better than changing core SR rules.
Trying to get a bunch of casuals to play with SR rules sounds like a horrible idea to me.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1137986But I've always been a low crunch / broad strokes gamer and I totally understand that heavy crunch games appeal to a certain demographic of the hobby. It not viable for one game to appeal to both groups.

However, we are very fortunate to live in the Golden Age of RPGs and SR can easily be recreated. There's probably already a few "cyberfantasy RPGs" already sitting on DriveThruRPG waiting for new players.

Exactly.
There are a great amount of systems with very low crunch, and applying an existing setting to one of them is not a lot of work.
No need to dumb down existing systems that actually have some crunch (not too many of those left that are still actively maintained) - what SR needs is better people working on it, not a completely different target audience.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1137951even TheSHEEEP himself (who's the defender of SR's status quo here)

I don't know about that.
The SR status quo at the moment is SR6, and that's hard to defend. I like to pretend SR5 is the latest SR
I'm just saying the system (SR4 or 5) doesn't need a broad streamlining or revamp, just some improvements to selected parts and a core rulebook that isn't a complete mess.
And a digital strategy.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1137986I have zero interest or patience for games with more than 30 minutes of chargen. I'm cool with 45 minutes if its my very first time and I'm still trying to figure out WTF everything might be in the book. My problem isn't the time investment because I've often been happy to put 20 hours into prepping a 4 hour game, but long chargen tells me the system is making the PCs too precious.

But I've always been a low crunch / broad strokes gamer and I totally understand that heavy crunch games appeal to a certain demographic of the hobby. It not viable for one game to appeal to both groups.

However, we are very fortunate to live in the Golden Age of RPGs and SR can easily be recreated. There's probably already a few "cyberfantasy RPGs" already sitting on DriveThruRPG waiting for new players.

At least as far as char gen is concerned point-buy systems like SR can easily be reduced to a few minutes prep work by simply turning character creation into a series preselected packages for common roles (deckers, street sammies, shamans, etc.) and backgrounds (street, former wage slave, corporate, etc), use average attributes by default, plus maybe a few selections to start one or two points higher. Then build everything else on top of that.

You don't even have to eliminate a single option from the system (at least progression-wise). You just have to wait. You could even handle lower than average attributes by using arrays or adding a few pre-calculated options of "lower X attributes by one point; increase Y attributes (not already increased) by one point". Each package could have a pre-calculated cost you deduct from your starting points, and if there are any left after you're done you could use them up if there's time, or wait till after session one, if everyone's ready to go (your package abilities should cover you anyways).

The problem is that most point-buy systems insist on making you build your character from zero, giving you all the snowflake options right out of the gate, rather than making you focus your character into being competent in one thing first, then building from that starting point. And the thing of it is EVERYONE is gonna end up taking certain skills at a basic level, like combat, spell casting (if they use magic), decking or whatever anyways. So making everyone buy all of that individually is a waste of time. Just take your package and add the snowflakes later.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee;1137774That may be a case, but then the question is: Who is this for? Make Shadowrun for the people that HATE Shadowrun and tell people that like Shadowrun to blow themselves?
Is it better to die then become a soulless lich?

And this is coming from a person that generally feels Shadowrun is over mechanized.

Crunch = Soul? Why?

I think the attraction of SR is the setting not the system. People want to play 'fantasy meets cyberpunk' I don't see how loads of crunch has much to do with that.

Quote from: Rhiannon;1138008Crunch = Soul? Why?

I think the attraction of SR is the setting not the system. People want to play 'fantasy meets cyberpunk' I don't see how loads of crunch has much to do with that.

I have to disagree with this. Part of Shadowrun's appeal was the crunch. The fact it was a simulationist system, the rules reflected what your character was doing in the real world. Building a Drone and a Cyberdeck under the rules reflected what your character was actually doing, what parts they were using. It felt like a world you could live in, and the rules reflected that.

If anything, Shadowrun has lost ground and appeal the more it's gotten away from those original rules.

Quote from: Rhiannon;1138008Crunch = Soul? Why?

I think the attraction of SR is the setting not the system. People want to play 'fantasy meets cyberpunk' I don't see how loads of crunch has much to do with that.

Settings are arbitrary.
Take a simple all-around system (e.g. your average d20 system), rename a few skills, abilities, etc. and put everything in the SR world.
Done. You now have the setting you love with rules that won't require you to think. Barely takes any effort.

If you want all the fine-tuning you can do with all kinds of cyberware, magic, weapon-, armor- & vehicle-modifications, then you want the crunch.
Same with combat. You can have a system with a wealth of targets, firing modes, strategies, just loads of options here requiring a certain kind of mastery to play well - or just roll a d20 to see how much damage you did until the enemy drops dead.
That leads to the question why you'd even want any rules to begin with if they are so simple you might as well just sit around the table and talk without ever using any rules at all - but that's a different topic.

What makes a system is not the setting. That's just fluff, an easily replacable background. You can even do what I wrote and take SR rules to play a pure fantasy setting - it was still 100% Shadowrun rules, didn't matter that there was no scifi/cyberpunk.
What makes a system are the rules, and those cannot be replaced or it wouldn't even be the same system anymore.

Someone cited the priority chargen above (sorry don't have the time to check now), but I think it work pretty well in 2E, as it was super simple. I even remember the amounts going from A to E to this day: Atribs were 30/24/21/18/16 or something, Resources 1mi, 400k, 90k, 40k, etc. Then we tried it in 5E and got frustrated by how slow it was and wonder how they managed to complicate something that was so simple.

So I agree that, barring redoing everything from scratch (which would bother the grogs) the idea of going back to 2E/3E and then streamlining from it has merit.

Speaking of, what do you think of those specific pools like Combat, Magic, Rigging, Decking, etc? I admit I liked that more than the Edge-fest of newer editions. If it is to abort me from the fiction to manage some meta-currency, at least the Pools had a strategic factor that was interesting to play with.

Quote from: TheSHEEEPWhy? Because settings are arbitrary, but a system isn't.

I don'get this. Care to elaborate?

Quote from: Itachi;1138202I don'get this. Care to elaborate?

I did.
Look two posts above...
But I'll do it some more:

The fact that you can take any setting and apply it to (pretty much) any ruleset with just minor changes - and are then playing that system with a different setting - proves it.
If settings were not arbitrary, we could never have played the Shadowrun system in a pure medieval/fantasy setting.

In the end, a setting is no different from an adventure or a campaign.
It doesn't matter if you use something pre-made (e.g. adventure book or stick closely to the setting as laid out in the rulebooks) or use something entirely made up by the GM.
The system in these cases remains the same, defining what it is you are playing.

Most books even state very clearly that you can use their setting or completely scrap it.
No book states that you can use the rules or completely scrap them - houseruling is always necessary, but that's just relatively small adjustments.
They are called rulebooks for a reason. Not settingbooks.

Thanks for clarifying.

Don't know if I agree. I find that both setting and rules should speak to each other in some degree, and that "fit" is usually more important than each part individually. But that's me.

Quote from: TheSHEEEP;11378661. Don't manually calculate everything, use tools. Get a laptop, get a phone. Many good tools around for initiative, etc. Nobody forces you to go full analog to draw things out unnecessarily. It's a scifi setting, go with the flow
2. Don't calculate initiative every round. It's completely unnecessary, really. But hey, here you got a point you can easily convince me to streamline. Thumbs up! Didn't even remember you are supposed to do that in SR.
3. Players calculate their own rolls and should have everything in their heads anyway. It takes a few seconds to get the number of dice you have. For experienced players, anyway, of course things take longer if people are new. If you have a bunch of experienced players and combat still takes hours, then I don't know what to tell you. Go back to class?
4. Deckers... yeah, true, but we covered that already.

If the solution to to much math is to hire an accountant, it's a bad system.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1139325If the solution to to much math is to hire an accountant, it's a bad system.

I'm always amused when fans address complaints of complexity by saying "Nah it's just a matter of... [complex procedures for modification that's as complex as the original ensues]".

You gentlefolk seem like experienced players but a lot of the math that is daunting to some could be lessened somewhat using a VTT.
There is one that is ONLY built for Shadowrun and nothing else, which I find hilarious and so appropriate.
It's a pretty slick setup.

Think it's free to use.  Maybe you guys can set a game up and have some fun during Covid.

Reddit thread group
https://www.reddit.com/r/ShadowrunKit/

SR Online Kit (use 'Guest') to check it out:
https://srkit.ca
(.ca?  Yay Canada)

Quote from: Warboss Squee;1139325

Quote1. Don't manually calculate everything, use tools. Get a laptop, get a phone. Many good tools around for initiative, etc. Nobody forces you to go full analog to draw things out unnecessarily. It's a scifi setting, go with the flow
2. Don't calculate initiative every round. It's completely unnecessary, really. But hey, here you got a point you can easily convince me to streamline. Thumbs up! Didn't even remember you are supposed to do that in SR.
3. Players calculate their own rolls and should have everything in their heads anyway. It takes a few seconds to get the number of dice you have. For experienced players, anyway, of course things take longer if people are new. If you have a bunch of experienced players and combat still takes hours, then I don't know what to tell you. Go back to class?
4. Deckers... yeah, true, but we covered that already.

If the solution to to much math is to hire an accountant, it's a bad system.

Was that just lazy quoting?
Your sentence doesn't even relate to 2., 3. or 4....

I'm going to go ahead and assume so.
How does using tools to make the flow a bit quicker equate to hiring an accountant?
It's just a matter of automating some stuff that helps with all systems, especially initiative passes, character HPs, etc.

About actual combat rules:
All it comes down to is just knowing your own values, maybe a dozen or two common modifications (running, behind cover, etc.) and being able to calculate numbers between 1 and 20 in your head.
Nothing that is even noteworthy or not automatically learned after a few sessions.
How anyone can consider this too much work or "too much math" is beyond me and if that kind of ignorance is something you wanna wear proudly on your sleeves, well, go right ahead... we do live in times where people are becoming more and more proud of their lack of education and mental capabilities again.