[0B]

Maybe in days to come PF2 may eventually persuade the industry back into crunchy systems, but if I was betting man, my money would be on TCoE for top TTRPG seller of 2020. It's already number one on Amazon.

What is TCoE? I tried searching for it, but the search engine had a fit trying to figure out what it stood for.

I'm guessing Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

[Shinobi Killfist]

They could try borrowing more of Earthsea's magic, what with Names and all that. I never played through Earthdawn, so I don't know how much "inspiration' the game got from Earthsea.

I don't know anything about earthsea to compare it.  But earthdawn was more of a D&D style system, spell levels, preparing spells etc.  not technically vancian but it had some roots there.  Basically think of the thematic element of SR magic now make the astral a constant background count of 20. The solution is people created magical constructs in their mind, they called them a spell matrix. You'd take your time and load a spell into the matrix, this protected you from the bad MANA( ). And you could cast the spell.  You might know a dozen spells but only have 3 spell matrix's, and swapping spells took some time. Add in more complex spells required you tie spell threads to them. 

So take the nethermancer he has two similar spells. Astral dart and astral spear.  Astral dart does willpower+2 damage, astral spear willpower+6.  So why do you cast or learn dart.  Astral spear required 1 spell thread.  Your default matrixes didn't have any attached, and couldn't hold onto them.  So every time you wanted to cast astral spear you wove a thread onto the matrix first. The test was simple, but it was an action.  More advanced spells like fireball or something might need 3 threads to be tied. You could attempt, to tie multiple threads at once but the difficulty escalated quickly.  And even with a low target number if you are rolling d12+d8(a fairly advanced caster) you can still pretty easily only get a 3 or 4. You didn't really risk astral stuff, spirit summoning was pretty rare, but some of the spells got dope. OTOH every PC was an adept, dudes were jumping 40 meters, shooting exploding fireball arrows etc.

I really loved the magic system.

[Shadowjack]

Anarchy has been more fun for me but it has some issues for sure. Anarchy 2E would be nice, especially if it had more work put into it. I don't mean that disrespectfully but 1E had some major oversights that are just crazy, either it was rushed or there was not enough people working on it. I feel it's decent but falls apart due to rules ambiguity. 5E and 6E are too complex and adhering to the old elements of the game, which are mechanically dated and not so much fun. I still think that the "giant handfuls of d6's!" is utter crap. When a large portion of the player base uses dice rolling apps you know something is wrong, because rolling dice has always been an awesome thing. I would scrap the entire system and start from scratch.

[penllawen]

I really loved the magic system.

Shadowrun and Earthdawn have the most interesting and best realised magic systems in RPGs, and that’s a hill I’d die on.

[Michael Chandra]

The term Alchera has been around for a while, since Street Magic apparently.

As for giant handfuls of d6s, that already was reduced quite a bit in SR6. Even more if you're running SRM rules, where skilltest modifiers are also capped. I prefer the d6 system, since it swings far less extreme than having less larger dice. And I've got plenty of Shadowrun dice to make hit-counting way easier.

[Marcus]

Maybe in days to come PF2 may eventually persuade the industry back into crunchy systems, but if I was betting man, my money would be on TCoE for top TTRPG seller of 2020. It's already number one on Amazon.

What is TCoE? I tried searching for it, but the search engine had a fit trying to figure out what it stood for.

I'm guessing Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

oB is correct. TCoE is the next Xanathar's basically. Not overly relevant to the larger point of this thread.

[0B]

The term Alchera has been around for a while, since Street Magic apparently.

That doesn't really make it better. People like to say "It was the 60's, they didn't know any better! It was the 90's, they didn't know any better! It was the 00's-" and it's never true. At least 4e explained where it came from, and presented it as an "in-setting" appropriation. Slip Streams completely removes that context.

As for handfuls of dice- it's hard to get more than 18-20 in a pool in 6e, and you have to be trying for it. At the same time, 10-14 is about the minimum anyone would have in a pool they use a lot. 6e has less dice than 5e due to this, and also because they don't have soak pools with 40+ dice.

In both cases, it's more dice than you would be rolling in 3e or earlier

[Shadowjack]

It doesn't matter to me that the dice pools are a bit smaller, they're still arbitrarily large. A common defense is that the large dice pools create more consistent outcomes but telling a good story at a good pace is far more important to me. I've had players complain during a session when there was lots of guys involved in a fight that were each rolling 10+ dice. Way too slow and completely unnecessary. To each their own, of course.

[Michael Chandra]

I've managed fights with 36 combatants rolling 12 to 17 dice each, without problems whatsoever. Furthermore, nothing stops you from cinematic gameplay when a fight is clearly decided already. But yes, to each their own, and if SR4 to SR6 all are not to your liking dicewise, you're best off just finding a different gaming system. Good luck!

[0B]

It doesn't matter to me that the dice pools are a bit smaller, they're still arbitrarily large. A common defense is that the large dice pools create more consistent outcomes but telling a good story at a good pace is far more important to me. I've had players complain during a session when there was lots of guys involved in a fight that were each rolling 10+ dice. Way too slow and completely unnecessary. To each their own, of course.

I prefer 6e's pools to 5e, but I think that they're still not quite "swingy" enough.

I dislike that the dice pools provide consistent outcomes. I don't know if I'd want something as random as a d20 system in SR, but if there's little to no chance involved, why bother rolling? If someone has a dice pool of 20 and they're up against a threshold of 2-3, baring exigent circumstances/modifiers the GM should just handwave it. But if they did that, then that eliminates the 1 in 50 chance or so that they do have of failure on such a roll.

It's like with hacking, at least in 5e. (Widget for math) Let's say you have a dice pool of 15 and you need 3 hits each time to succeed. Each time, you have a 92% chance of success, and a 8% chance of failure. The chance of succeeding without failure 3 times in a row (without getting marks) is 78%.

This is a waste of time: instead of making someone roll 3 times, make them roll once, against a higher threshold. They have a 79% chance of success if they need 4 hits to succeed. 78 vs 79 is small enough that it shouldn't matter for game balance.

So, instead of having people roll hundreds of times over the course of a session, make them roll dozens of times, against harder thresholds, in situations where success and failure are meaningful. In other words, I prefer 6e's matrix. It's not a matter of things being 'cinematic' or whatever, it's more that I hate rolling for the sake of rolling when there are more efficient ways of accomplishing a goal. I despise 5e's extended tests. I do. They needed to die.

Michael, I really hope you were using grunt rules for those fights with 36 combatants. I think I'd rather stab my eyes out then move for 30 individual NPCs in combat...

[Shinobi Killfist]

I really loved the magic system.

Shadowrun and Earthdawn have the most interesting and best realised magic systems in RPGs, and that’s a hill I’d die on.

Agreed.  They do a better job of explaining how the magic works  in the setting and how it fits into the world than most systems.

[tenchi2a]

Last I heard (and this wad YEARS ago) CGL was the only bid on the Battletech and SR IPs. Take that for what's it worth :/

My understanding was that they (Catalyst) were only interested in the Battletech IP, but Topps insisted that Shadowrun be included as a package deal (i.e. Catalyst either developed both, or didn't get the license).

I had inquired about this on the Battletech side a few years back as I was wondering if their was a chance to resurrect the Renegade Legion IP. and after some deep dives and talking to a few people it seems that all the old FASA games (minus outside IPs; Star trek,Dr Who, etc) are under one group licence owned by Topps, and everything was in there. So yes it does seem to be a package deal, but this I think had more to due with the issues of splitting up the licences that they had in the past. As for Renegade Legion IP I found that it was such a failure under Nightshift games that they just shelved it.

So, as to Topps selling off the Shadowrun licence, I would say the chances are small and it would be more likely to be shelved like the Renegade Legion IP. People seem to forget that the process of sub-licencing or down right selling off a IP cost money to both companies and the company renting or buying the IP has to see the potential to make money over the cost of; buying the IP, producing it, and marketing it. And as it has been said already if CGL is just barely make a profit on most of their products and they own them through Topps, the likelihood of another companies buying or leasing the licence are very low.

[wraith]

I find it a bit sick that in a time like this, where so many people and companies have gone through hardship, you still insist on comparing sale numbers.

Sales are the lifeblood of CGL remaining a going concern, are they not?

Not that I'd personally be terribly against seeing who Topps licenses the IP to next at this point.

[0B]

It's just a plain old fashioned argument to pity. Don't ask me why- if we are supposed to be concerned about the hardship that CGL is going through, then sales numbers are the most "visible" sign of how it's doing.

Still, there's a reason why I stuck to analyzing the numbers themselves in that post, and not rushing to any judgements on the success of CGL as a company, whether sales decreases are good/bad, etc. I understand that it's easy for someone to take something like that personally, because regardless of whether or not you like CGL, people on this board are attached to SR and its success.

[Finstersang]

Michael, I really hope you were using grunt rules for those fights with 36 combatants. I think I'd rather stab my eyes out then move for 30 individual NPCs in combat...

It´s also very very important to make sure that the whole group of grunts can only earn a max. of 2 Edge per round, so that the PC can already ignore one half of the AR-DR comparison in 90% of times