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Shadowrun - Good Setting, Bad Games

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11 Aug 2015 15:55 #208316 by Shellhead

John Myers wrote: Shadowrun always looks from the outside like it should be a huge amount of fun, jamming together a bunch of concepts that don't really compliment each other (elves and hacking, orcs and rocket launchers, cyber-ninjas and dragons) and giving players an opportunity to really go nuts.

In practice its tone and rule set always contradicts this, the writing seems to think the idea of elven virtual reality hackers taking down the System is something we should take Very Seriously. And the aggressive complexity and finickiness of the system reinforces this idea.

If you took the basic ideas of Shadowrun and gave them the tone and fast-paced play style of something like the Borderlands games, I think you would be really on to something.


That sounds plausible, but it didn't work for the Feng Shui rpg, which included a heady mix of kung fu, magic, cybernetics, guns, explosives, and mutations. The basic system of the game was simple and rewarded players for action and style. The core book included a bunch of ready-to-play character templates. The setting was an easy sell to fans of the Shadowfist CCG which was somewhat popular at the time. But Feng Shui failed, and then failed again a few years later after another company revived it.

My theory about the popularity of Shadowrun is that it gave people a completely different setting in which they could use the same miniatures that they had already purchased and painted for D&D.

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11 Aug 2015 15:58 #208317 by Not Sure
Maybe I'm an outlier, but I never thought SR was all that complicated.

Compared to deliberate rules-light systems that exist now it's got some addition and such, but nothing serious. Chuck a bunch of dice, hit a target number. This is "crunchy"? It's simpler than half the board games we talk about here. I know RPG fans are often allergic to math, but nothing there was hard.

Contrasted with a real heavyweight system like Champions or GURPS, SR was a mind-off sort of game. The hardest decisions were usually where to spend your points in character creation (also pretty fast-tracked). Maybe "which gun should I use"?
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11 Aug 2015 16:28 - 11 Aug 2015 16:33 #208322 by Josh Look
The Shadowrun setting is just fucking awful. I can't believe I'm about to agree with GL, but he's right on the money as to its appeal nowadays. It's like it was custom built for the same group of people who will buy mashup t-shirts because "It's Firefly AND Doctor Who, what could be better than two things I love on one shirt, LULZ." Thanks for nothing, you ignorant shits.

That being said, the old Genesis and SNES games were pretty fun when they came out, would never consider revisiting them, and Shadowrun Returns is pretty good. I didn't have as much of a problem with the first game as many people did and the second part is even better.
Last edit: 11 Aug 2015 16:33 by Josh Look.

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11 Aug 2015 16:56 #208328 by John Myers
Feng Shui 2 raised over $185,000 on Kickstarter . So I wouldn't say there isn't an audience for that sort of thing.

I've ran the classic game a lot, although I almost never use the default setting, just the mechanics. But we definitely do a lot of okay "you steal the money from the gangsters but the gangsters are demons and the money is cursed. Also, it really belongs to cyborgs from the future and now they are chasing" type of stuff and we've always had a great time.

But I can also get why that's not for everyone.
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12 Aug 2015 09:56 - 12 Aug 2015 10:03 #208352 by SuperflyPete
Shadowrun is bad ass. Maybe if you don't dig down past the veneer the "Steak with Hershey's" seems lame, but the setting is rich and fucking bad ass. Dragons and meta humans return to earth in the time of the rise of science? Fuck yeah. The sourcebooks are like little slices of another universe.

Sorry that people changed your wee dwarves and elves, but toughsky shitsky. I'd much rather play a midget with a submachine gun and a robotic arm than a midget in armor with a lame ass fake Scottish accent. Really, Shadowrun managed to take lame high fantasy bullshit and wrap it in a bad ass Kevlar suit.

The video and board games have historically sucked ass. Yes. Shadowrun Returns and Directors Cut are great, though. I really love them. Already pre-ordered Hong Kong, in fact. Their only sin is that they are as short as a fallout New Vegas expansion.

I'll probably buy the corporations board game set in Seattle, but they really need to impress me on this or I'm calling it quits on anything but the video games.
Last edit: 12 Aug 2015 10:03 by SuperflyPete.
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12 Aug 2015 10:41 #208353 by Mr. White

SuperflyTNT wrote: The video and board games have historically sucked ass..


Well, the SNES game is one of the best rpgs ever made. From what I understand Shadowrun Returns is based on it.

It had a kickass soundtrack as well.

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12 Aug 2015 10:42 #208354 by SebastianBludd
Noah Antwiler has a video series called Counter Monkey where he talks about his experiences playing RPG's. In this one he talks about how his Shadowrun campaign degenerated into a bizarre arms race between the DM (him) and his players:

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12 Aug 2015 12:13 #208360 by Green Lantern

Not Sure wrote: Maybe I'm an outlier, but I never thought SR was all that complicated.

Compared to deliberate rules-light systems that exist now it's got some addition and such, but nothing serious. Chuck a bunch of dice, hit a target number. This is "crunchy"? It's simpler than half the board games we talk about here. I know RPG fans are often allergic to math, but nothing there was hard.

Contrasted with a real heavyweight system like Champions or GURPS, SR was a mind-off sort of game. The hardest decisions were usually where to spend your points in character creation (also pretty fast-tracked). Maybe "which gun should I use"?


Good point. The base system is simple, no doubt. The added complexity comes when you throw in all the different algorithms for combat, vehicles, magic, and the matrix. That's the confusing part. Yes, the basic concept is to grab a bunch of D6s, throw the bones and hit your TN, BUT the real drag is compiling that pile of dice as it changes based on what you are trying to do in the game. That can get tedious and frustrating when you have an expansive list of skills, cyberware, magical focus, etc. to factor in. And, once you get your pool of dice ready to roll the GM has to now consider another exhaustive list of circumstance modifiers to adjust your chances of failure. Ugh. Yeah, it might not be that bad from the player POV but as a GM it sucks.

I'm done with the buckets of dice too. Sure, it's fun for a while getting to toss a pound of dice and tabulate your results, but it gets old when you realize there are much faster and simpler ways to tell a story. Now, like I said earlier, if you like games with very detailed attribute, skill, spell, and equipment options then look no further than Shadowrun. I personally don't want such a "crunchy" system any more and prefer the lighter RPGs available on the market today.

I think we simply have different definitions of what "crunchy" means when describing a rules system. To me it's not about mathematical complexity. It's more about the level of effort and gyrations I have to go through to manage a game system and not toss the rules out to tell an engaging story. So yeah, Shadowrun's rules through five editions now have never managed to streamline or make things less "crunchy" so I've ditched it as a GM.
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12 Aug 2015 12:35 #208361 by SuperflyPete
Shadowrun Returns isn't based off of it, but the great mod tools that shipped with it allowed a talented guy to make a redux of the game with the Returns:DC engine.

It's the next best thing to Fallout 2, IMHO. I'm currently playing Wasteland 2, which is also fabulous.

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12 Aug 2015 22:46 #208409 by dysjunct
I think the games blow BECAUSE the setting blows. It's a sprawling mess, thematically and in the details. There's the lasersharking element mentioned already. But more fundamentally it tries to combine sci-fi, noir, and high fantasy. Those deal with some pretty damn different assumptions and interests. If you can't figure out what your setting is about, you're going to have a lot of trouble making a game about it.

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13 Aug 2015 00:08 #208411 by Shellhead
One standard characteristic of cyberpunk was a multi-cultural setting. Advanced communication technology (the internet) exposed the masses to a wide range of cultural influences, with characters eating ethnic foods, listening to exotic music, and dabbling in foreign customs, as a matter of normal daily living.

Unfortunately, many gamers are so far down the nerd rabbit hole that they know more about Moria than the Maori. So it was probably more practical for Shadowrun to deal with stereotypical fantasy races instead of actual human cultures and sub-cultures.

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13 Aug 2015 01:47 #208413 by Not Sure

Shellhead wrote: One standard characteristic of cyberpunk was a multi-cultural setting. Advanced communication technology (the internet) exposed the masses to a wide range of cultural influences, with characters eating ethnic foods, listening to exotic music, and dabbling in foreign customs, as a matter of normal daily living.

Unfortunately, many gamers are so far down the nerd rabbit hole that they know more about Moria than the Maori. So it was probably more practical for Shadowrun to deal with stereotypical fantasy races instead of actual human cultures and sub-cultures.


I'm not suggesting you should like it or anything, your feelings are pretty clear. But that statement is just laughable, considering all the world-building they were doing even back in 2nd Edition when I was still paying attention. There was way more cultural thought given to that game than I ever saw out of any similar game of the era, especially for cultural minorities. I'll just briefly point out the major theme of Native Americans in the default Seattle setting, because it's visible on the cover of almost every book FASA published. The local culture drove the magic trappings for any area of the world they sketched in, right down to the "monsters".

You can hate it for being a thematic mess, you can hate it for piddly die mods on pounds of dice (a fair beef for sure), but to look at the stacks of sourcebooks and say "Tolkien" makes me wonder if you ever looked inside those books.

GL's issues are certainly legit, although making the players responsible for "their" mods and slapping situational effects on that never felt like it slowed me down too much. With combative players who want to haggle modifiers, it could definitely be a problem. Again, the d6 aspect made certain +1/-1 mods critical (TN6 is twice as hard as TN5, but TN7 is a freebie), which was to me the major design failure.

It's been more than 20 years since I've played SR, the most I've done with later editions is read through some books (4th, I believe...). The world of RPGs moved on, and I haven't really bothered keeping up, aside from reading a system or two every few years. I don't necessarily miss the type of systems SR had, I just don't play RPGs of any sort anymore. SR was a weird beast for sure, but the writers weren't terribly sloppy about it. They really enjoyed their crazy world and it showed in the fluff.

I had fun with it and a good group of friends, and as far as good RPG times had in the old days, it's second only to WFRP for me.
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13 Aug 2015 02:47 #208416 by VALIS

John Myers wrote: "you steal the money from the gangsters but the gangsters are demons and the money is cursed. Also, it really belongs to cyborgs from the future and now they are chasing"


YEEEEES!!

I am loving this conversation and the polarized opinions (and the venomous fury!). I was always intrigued by the setting but never played.

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13 Aug 2015 04:14 #208417 by Sevej

SuperflyTNT wrote: Shadowrun Returns isn't based off of it, but the great mod tools that shipped with it allowed a talented guy to make a redux of the game with the Returns:DC engine.

It's the next best thing to Fallout 2, IMHO. I'm currently playing Wasteland 2, which is also fabulous.


Really Pete? Is it that great?

I've been somewhat resistant to the return of "classic style" RPG such as Pillars of Eternity and Wasteland 2. Mainly because, in the past, this style of RPG just lead me to number crunching which amounts to... nothing. I end up just focus fire (and maybe the alpha strike fireball) everything.

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13 Aug 2015 09:19 #208426 by SuperflyPete
My favorite games are top-down CRPGs and strategy. These are really damned good. My only bitch is that both the Shadowrun volumes are too short. 16 hours at best.

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