[fseperent]

... ("gee if I can get a really good roll I could blow up a building using my French Baking skill")...

What the heck were you baking? 

My guess: a baguette loaded with military grade plastique.
On topic, whichever the Genesis game used.
The format made it easier to understand.

[Shinobi Killfist]

... ("gee if I can get a really good roll I could blow up a building using my French Baking skill")...

What the heck were you baking? 

Assuming this is a semi serious question, mainly for the readers who may not know earlier editions. They were baking nothing. The skill web just allowed you to default to something other than attributes. Sometimes it would be easier and better to default to a attribute sometimes a skill. But since the system didn’t have a attribute+skill system things were different.

Basic idea was using 3e skills. Let’s say you have a 6 in edged weapons. It’s somewhat likely you picked up something during all that training that would apply to clubs or even unarmed and you’d be better off than a dude with the same agility but no combat skills at all. It might be 1 jump on the skill web instead of 2. Meaning a +2 tn instead of +4. Again no skill+attribute. All being equal you go with the shortest number of jumps. But let’s say baker skill is 15, you have a intelligence of 1. Demolitions is 4 jumps from baking but only 1 from your stat. Do you roll 15 dice with a +8tn penalty or 1 die with a +2. At this absurd extreme baking is the better default choice. Doubt baking linked up at all but it may have for all I know.

[Singularity]

... ("gee if I can get a really good roll I could blow up a building using my French Baking skill")...

What the heck were you baking? 

Assuming this is a semi serious question, mainly for the readers who may not know earlier editions. They were baking nothing. The skill web just allowed you to default to something other than attributes. Sometimes it would be easier and better to default to a attribute sometimes a skill. But since the system didn’t have a attribute+skill system things were different.

Basic idea was using 3e skills. Let’s say you have a 6 in edged weapons. It’s somewhat likely you picked up something during all that training that would apply to clubs or even unarmed and you’d be better off than a dude with the same agility but no combat skills at all. It might be 1 jump on the skill web instead of 2. Meaning a +2 tn instead of +4. Again no skill+attribute. All being equal you go with the shortest number of jumps. But let’s say baker skill is 15, you have a intelligence of 1. Demolitions is 4 jumps from baking but only 1 from your stat. Do you roll 15 dice with a +8tn penalty or 1 die with a +2. At this absurd extreme baking is the better default choice. Doubt baking linked up at all but it may have for all I know.

I was actually curious. Wow, just wow. Just to clarify, as 6th edition will be my first edition: It's not that wonky anymore, correct?

[Michael Chandra]

We don't know. But it's unlikely, yes. There is rules regarding defaulting in SR5, where a GM can allow you to default on a related skill and the GM picks the relevant penalty, but there's no official abusable default-steps-index.

[Singularity]

We don't know. But it's unlikely, yes. There is rules regarding defaulting in SR5, where a GM can allow you to default on a related skill and the GM picks the relevant penalty, but there's no official abusable default-steps-index.

Excellent! Since I'll be GMing the starter box, I don't want to have to say "Sorry Francis, I don't care how good your ancient Hungarian underwater basketweaving is; you are not using it to hack the megacorps!"

[Michael Chandra]

Actually... I can imagine using that to properly datatap the datacable of the underwater facility...

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Here's a visual aid for skill defaulting in older editions of Shadowrun.  It was called the Skill Web and the way it worked you'd count the number of pips between any two skills you wanted to default on.  You can follow a line in the direction of an arrow, but may not draw a path against an arrow.



 So for example, if you wanted to default on your general Athleticism to shoot someone with a Pistol, you count 3 pips between Athletics and Pistols so depending on the edition, you'd know how big or small a penalty to apply.  In contrast, Stealth has more pips than that and so is an even more penalized default skill.  And you can't get from Bikes to Pistols without going against an arrow, so you couldn't use that to default at all.

5th edition dispensed with a regimented defaulting system and just put it in the realm of GM prerogative as to which skills may default to other skills, and if so what the penalty would be.

[AJCarrington]

Ahhhh...some good memories there. Any people complain about the complexity of games today

[FastJack]

Geez, I almost forgot about that skill web.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I liked it. It made a degree of sense though it had specific calmly examples in that related skills when learned give you a grasp of other things. For ease a generic statement like in 5e works as well.

[CanRay]

... ("gee if I can get a really good roll I could blow up a building using my French Baking skill")...

What the heck were you baking? 

Whatever this guy is baking.

[kyoto kid]

... ("gee if I can get a really good roll I could blow up a building using my French Baking skill")...

What the heck were you baking? 

...a soufflé made with C-16.  It collapsed with a big bada boom!

[Voran]

I've said my Rigger pieces before, but I will say, even if I rarely got the chance to use vehicles like those seen in the rigger art, yknow the ones, the supercars with the obvious non-hidden antivehicle weaponry and stuff, I've always wanted to have a setting where you could use that without it immediately being considered a terrorist level event

Been watching GitS SAC again lately, makes me want to see logic tanks, heh and the new cover art for 6 with that guy charging the drone made me think 'ooh tachikoma' or Lynx + arms + external rigger cocoon

[jim1701]

The editions I have experience with are 2nd (technically 1st but 2nd came out so fast I don't think we actually used 1st ed rules), 4A (20th Anniversary Ed.) and 5th. 

It's hard to say which is best.  2nd ed was a long time ago but we had tons of fun and the rules actually worked.  I'd say it's still my favorite. 

4A did make some questionable design decisions though the biggest ones were in the matrix which we tended to avoid anyway.  But the editing was superb and I can house rule fixes for design problems.  Creating house rules for crappy editing is a lot harder which brings me to 5e. 

5e is a dumpster fire IMHO, full stop.  There were a lot of good concepts in 5e and there were a lot of horrible ones (limits I'm looking at you) but either way no one I know F2F could stick with 5e for long as we just could not get past the craptacular editing. 

I'll keep my 2e and 4A books forever but one of these days when convenient I'll be dumping my 5e books off at Bookman's to see what kind of credit I can get.  They're just taking up space for better games. 

As to Sixth World I'm a little encouraged by what I've seen so far but I'm going to need to see a lot of really positive reviews before I give Jason Hardy's team any more of my money. 

[kyoto kid]

...in Missions we have no choice but to deal with the poor editing and disorganised structure.  Some in our local group took the initiative to create "cheat sheets" and playing aids such as ones for spirits, matrix actions, and combat actions/options to minimise having to plough through two or three books to find things during play.

I've been using Chummer instead of the standard character sheet as it provides more details, like weapon attributes, skills/pools, armour, vehicles, etc and doesn't run out of space for gear (I have yet to see a "out of the box" RPG character sheet that provides enough room for gear/supplies).  It's not the best as it does have a few odd traits, but it does help organise the character better.  Hero Lab actually gives a bit more information and is pretty accurate, but it is expensive and generally you need a tablet or notebook computer for your character to access those functions.