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What is the current general opinion on 5E products?

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Rapier

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« Reply #15 on: <06-10-15/1515:53> »
AJ what I can sense is that a lot of people are working hard to make things better. I just wish management would get out of the way.

ScytheKnight

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« Reply #16 on: <06-10-15/1915:56> »
Ahh, you mean the people making sure the business keeps running so they can continue to make the products?

Honestly, you pretty much stopped at the low point, there's been a steady improvement since SG.
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AJCarrington

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« Reply #17 on: <06-11-15/0920:35> »
@Rapier - at the end of the day, you, as the consumer, make the final call. Changing can take time...I feel things are going in the right direction, but, that's my opinion. As others have noted, it might be worth your time to check it some of the more recent releases and see how they stack up. Currently, I'm particularly partial to Lockdown ;D

Herr Brackhaus

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« Reply #18 on: <06-11-15/1755:34> »
Currently, I'm particularly partial to Lockdown ;D
So am I, coincidentally. I thought Lockdown was by far one of the better sourcebooks published, right up there with Renraku Arcology: Shutdown, Brainscan, System Failure, and Bug City. Slight spoiler alert:



When the reference to Dayus (or however it was misspelled) was made, I got chills. And the whole diary in the life of a Lockdownee was just pure gold.

I might be a fan of Shadowrun, but I don't consider myself a fanatical one. I am fairly vocal in my criticism of some of the design choices that have been made, but after what I saw in Run Faster and Lockdown, I am more than happy to deal with some poorly written rules if that's what it takes.

halflingmage

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« Reply #19 on: <06-30-15/1930:48> »
Overall-

On the plus side

5th ed is much easier to introduce a new player to.  Its still crunch heavy but build points in 4th ran off some players of mine.  They literally looked at the core book and said no way, I am not going to the trouble of learning that. 

I think the core mechanics of 5th, including the changes to decking and the minor changes to magic, are very sound.  I would rather play those than 4th.  With the occasional house rule to patch omissions in the rules, its certainly playable. 

On the negative side-

Editing and production quality are inconsistent.  Core book is ok if you get the 2nd printing, I think Run Faster and Run and Gun were reasonably well done.  Street Grimoire was more iffy, but it has a bunch of traditions and a expended spell list, which is nice to have.  It completely lacked some thing that some people were expecting, such as rules for custom spell design or even just inventing formulas for known spells from scratch. Other sections were simply. . . puzzling, both in their mechanical implementation and how they would actually affect a game.

The last two main books, Data Trails and Chrome flesh (I have data trails, chrome flesh I have not seem yet, but I have heard multiple reports) are fluff bombs.   I was deeply disappointed in Data trails, both in the amount of useful material that was actually in it, its almost non-existent table of contents and complete lack of an index, and the fact that areas that needed some real mechanical love, like technomaners, got almost no attention.  I don't know how much hard rules are actually in Chrome Flesh, but I am hearing the same thing, tons of jackpointer fluff, meaningless TOC,, and yet again no index. 

Marzhin

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« Reply #20 on: <06-30-15/1947:29> »
While Chrome Flesh is indeed heavy on the fluff once again, I get the feeling it's better balanced than Data Trails, with some meaty crunch as well.
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I_AM_ZHOUL!!!

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« Reply #21 on: <07-01-15/0913:24> »
While Chrome Flesh is indeed heavy on the fluff once again, I get the feeling it's better balanced than Data Trails, with some meaty crunch as well.

They definitely added some new 'ware & drugs.... but the end of the Drug chapter which was going strong just falls apart & the Addiction Mechanic wasn't touched. Their Example has a guy who Custom Drug is Addiction Rating 10 & Addiction Threshold 8! He's Burned Out in a Month and dead 6 weeks later after burning his Attributes to 0... that's not a good example. Couple that with the fact that the Rules for Addiction Threshold & Addiction Rating aren't even given and I had to Reverse Engineer them to guess at it to post in the Errata thread. Whoever wrote it obviously didn't know the Addiction Rule Set. Which we undoubtedly wonky & needing a revision but now they have become wonky & lethal, with the changes made to the Drug Reaction rules. It's anytime you take more than 1 drug (including things like Stimm or Trauma payches) you have to start rolling instead of stacking attribute boosting drugs. Heck with the way the rules are written there's a decent chance you can get addicted to the immunosuppressive drugs if you get surgery for new ware during game play.

Overall it's definitely one of the stronger books with good content but that's saying something when there are huge chunks missing, the issue about Lockdown Cybersuites (which work for a video game being one shot packages) so Cybersuites had to become Bundles which weren't handled that bad... just not that impressive, &the complete LACK of any crunch at the end regarding Cybermacy, CyberZombies, Cyborgs disappeared entirely, & I correctly guessed how the CFD issue is being resolved which I concede CFD did make a good Plot Arc (I still hate it though.)

Herr Brackhaus

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« Reply #22 on: <07-01-15/1059:42> »
the complete LACK of any crunch at the end regarding Cybermacy, CyberZombies, Cyborgs disappeared entirely
That's what you get for speculating ;)

tytalan

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« Reply #23 on: <07-06-15/1829:26> »
Being a long time Shadowrun player and GM, Does anyone remember hackerjacks?,  here my thoughts I love the evolution of Shadowrun from 1st to 3rd after 4th came out I decided I would not be going on buying the new edition 4th seemed broken from the start.  lat last year while I was hating on 5ed D&D I picked up the main book for Shadowrun 5th yes this was a 1st printing and I have seen worse 1st printings.  To me 5th compares very well tp 3rd which was the best.   

I think part of the complainants are because people have been expecting to much in the books,  we know that there is a Technomancer book coming next year and Riggers never get loving in the main book.  Weapon modification did not come out in 3rd until the paramilitary book and they did 2 magic books. 


As for to much Fluff this is a RPG not a Miniatures combat game Fluff is an important tool for both players and GM's 

No so far I've been very happy with 5th now if they could just not put the vehicle guide in the riggers book.     

All4BigGuns

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« Reply #24 on: <07-07-15/0134:05> »
As for to much Fluff this is a RPG not a Miniatures combat game Fluff is an important tool for both players and GM's   

Some "fluffy bits" in the core book (one to three chapters) is good to give a feel for the setting of the game, but aside from that, those bits really need to be kept out of rules source books and confined to their own publications, IMO.
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tytalan

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« Reply #25 on: <07-07-15/0642:28> »
ALL4BigGuns I truly have to Disagree with that I would reather have fluff thru out all of the source books, each book having the flufff that goes with it than trying to publish books of pure fluff.  White Wolf did that and ended up with a large number of books that sold in very small numbers because they were fluff dealing with only GM's or one type of character.  These Fluff books ended up being a major drain on the company and bad for bizz.  besides what most people are calling fluff is either important Role-Play info or great plot hooks.  If you want a game with no Fluff go pick yourself up a copy of "Hero System" no fluff just rules.

AJCarrington

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« Reply #26 on: <07-07-15/1043:19> »
One of the things I like about SR, IS the heavy inclusion of fluff with the rules. The flavor/context makes it a lot more interesting when reading and consumption of the rules easier (fro me).

adzling

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« Reply #27 on: <07-07-15/1049:29> »
I like the fluff, but too much is too much for a crunch book.

All4BigGuns

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« Reply #28 on: <07-07-15/1128:14> »
Core rules sources should be 90% new mechanical material and 10% "fluffy". This is because these are the most expensive of the books and any less rules material makes the source worth less than the price tag. The more minor publications should go to around the 50/50 split.
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AJCarrington

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« Reply #29 on: <07-07-15/1209:01> »
Interesting...I don't equate crunch to value...hadn't thought about it like that.