[Zilfer]

When the last action declared was finished, Declarations were made again... wash rinse repeat till one side had smoking weapons and the other was bleeding to death. No Passes, simple, clean, fluid.

Also, the extra IP's represent (to a degree, albeit a large one) relative combat effectiveness.  This differentiates the full-on combat guys from those folks who are there to provide either (1) a specific skillset, or (2) a meat shield.  I say it works well for that.

Err ... I don't quite know what game the two of you have been playing, but Shadowrun has always had some form of 'initiative passes'.  In the first three versions of the game, your total initiative score (Reaction + Xd6) determined how many Complex Actions (i.e. initiative passes) you received.  Initially, this was based on an irregular scale; later, it was determined as every 10 or fraction thereof got you an initiative pass.  (Which is fantastic if your base Initiative is 10 + 1d6; until you're injured, you're guaranteed two full/complex actions.  And if you're smart, you'll never get injured.)

How the initiative passes are run has changed (though only slightly); most of what's altered is how they're determined.  Used to be that a hypered-up Elf with the aforementioned base Reaction of 10 and Wired Reflexes 3 had an initiative of 16 + 4d6, and if the player rolled even slightly over average, they'd get four Complex Actions.  Now no matter how bad you roll, even if your reaction and intuition are in the crapper, as long as you have that Wired 3 you still are gonna get 4 IPs -- and the super-slick elf that doesn't have the wires is going to be plonking along at 1.  (This sucks, IMO, and is one of the minor beefs I have with the revision.)

IPs also in no way represent relative combat effectiveness; the aforementioned clueless dweeb with the hyper-Wires (Dreyfuss the doofus, anyone?) and neither coordination nor skill may shoot at you eight times, but is utterly ineffective if he can't hit you.  The 1 IP super-agile elf who listens to her quite-accurate instinct is going to kill two guys on her IP while the best that Mr. Dreyfuss can do with his 8 bullets (or lots of them, if he's firing bursts or full auto) is make people duck.

It was also "I attack, I hit, I do damage, you attack, you hit, you do damage" etc. etc. until everyone gouged their eyeballs out.  There were no options beyond what sword you wanted to hit the guy with.  Today, there are options, and it gets a lot crazier.

And again, I'm really not sure where you're coming from with this; previous Editions of Shadowrun had, if anything, far, far more complications than either version of SR4 has you deal with.  I don't believe I've yet to come across an 'option' in SR4 that wasn't either in the previous edition(s) rules, or an oft-used widespread House Rule that might as well have already been written into the game.

I think their posts went right over your head.

Pretty sure they were talking about the old days where their was mostly just games like dungeons and dragons. I don't think they were talking about Shadowrun specifically. Who knows maybe it went over my head instead. xD

[The_Gun_Nut]

You are correct, Zilfer.