[Mustakrakish]

DCs should aid the narrative. If the best pilot in the team has a dice pool of 6, giving him a DC of 3 or 4 should be hard enough to add a little dramatic tension to the scene, maybe he will find creative ways to boost his pool and make the roll. And if his dice pool is 14, just increase the DC accordingly if you think that it will increase the drama on the table, or even make it easy for him, so he could show off, and feel great about his character and how pro it is when it comes to piloting.

For me the end goal is fun. And piloting checks, in my opinion, should be a "HELL YEAH!!!! WHHOOOO! / OH NO!!!" moments on the table. Otherwise, rolling for nonsense will just bog down the session.

[Michael Chandra]

True, you have the 'whoot!/frag!' rolls for showing off, and the 'we're idiots' rolls for consequences. Unless your players are big fools, piloting shouldn't be the second.

(If I were to write content which features snow, I'd go ahead and put a headsup meant for the players in the vehicle section, advising people on that bad vehicles may be hard to control so they should exert carefulness. Communicate the risks up front so they are aware and don't do anything foolish. Would work best with content that faces a deadline, otherwise you wouldn't care about their speed anyway.)

[BeCareful]

But if everyone's driving in a blizzard - I'll see myself out.

Before I go, that has piqued my interest: most shadowruns begin with, "You get a message from your fixer, you all pile into the rigger's van, you head to The Place of the Meet," but I've never been in one where getting to the meet itself involves danger. If the other PCs aren't all, "Why does Mr. Johnson need us driving quickly through snow right now!? Nah, I'll pass," I'd be up for it.

[Shinobi Killfist]

But if everyone's driving in a blizzard - I'll see myself out.

Before I go, that has piqued my interest: most shadowruns begin with, "You get a message from your fixer, you all pile into the rigger's van, you head to The Place of the Meet," but I've never been in one where getting to the meet itself involves danger. If the other PCs aren't all, "Why does Mr. Johnson need us driving quickly through snow right now!? Nah, I'll pass," I'd be up for it.

I think there may have been one where the Johnson has you waylaid as a test. Chicago missions has multiple driving tests due to bad weather though I think all of those were lost meet.

But theoretically I can see a rush job from a known contact. Random Johnson that might send up some danger signals but your mechanic frank calls to say he needs help fast people just grabbed his little sister, get here quick before the scene goes cold.

[Ghost Rigger]

Daily reminder that cumbersome semi-trailer trucks drive at high speeds on snowy roads so often there are entire companies dedicated solely to recovering the percentage that have accidents under those conditions. Driving a cumbersome vehicle is hazardous conditions should be dangerous, yes, but not suicidal.

[mortonstromgal]

If you're driving a standard car with an above average driving skill in any area without GridGuide at a speed that shouldn't kill your above average dicepool and are dumb enough to still be playing a CGL Shadowrun game, your character deserves to burn to a crisp. There, entire debate summarised.

Fixed that for you.

You cant really blame CGL on bad rigging rules... Every edition has sucked, remember per RAW forcing more air through your electric engine made it go faster in 1e... ie throwing a turbo on an electric engine. Really its an argument of which rigging rules are less terrible for your group?

[Shinobi Killfist]

If you're driving a standard car with an above average driving skill in any area without GridGuide at a speed that shouldn't kill your above average dicepool and are dumb enough to still be playing a CGL Shadowrun game, your character deserves to burn to a crisp. There, entire debate summarised.

Fixed that for you.

You cant really blame CGL on bad rigging rules... Every edition has sucked, remember per RAW forcing more air through your electric engine made it go faster in 1e... ie throwing a turbo on an electric engine. Really its an argument of which rigging rules are less terrible for your group?

Eh. That’s bad science not a rule that doesn’t function. Most rigging rules were bad but it’s because they had a hard time designing chase scenes.  Which I think 5e did well.  When it was drone on people it was fine in most editions as it was just a combat test. This issue just shows they didn’t math out a lot of the vehicles when making the rules.

[Arkas]

You cant really blame CGL on bad rigging rules... Every edition has sucked, remember per RAW forcing more air through your electric engine made it go faster in 1e... ie throwing a turbo on an electric engine. Really its an argument of which rigging rules are less terrible for your group?

Well actually CGL can be blamed just the same as everyone else who officially published bad rules. The older editions did not force them to conceive the rules as they did. Blame is however not the most interesting part... for them to fix it would be.

[Michael Chandra]

If they were actually broken I'd agree.

[penllawen]

For me the end goal is fun. And piloting checks, in my opinion, should be a "HELL YEAH!!!! WHHOOOO! / OH NO!!!" moments on the table. Otherwise, rolling for nonsense will just bog down the session.

Good RPG systems should have cohesion between the narrative and the mechanics.

Consider SR5. A piloting test is Vehicle Skill + Reaction, limited by the vehicle's handling. This has a difficulty of 1 for easy tests, described as "Merging, passing, sudden stop, drift or gradual turn (less than 75 degrees).". It has a threshold of 2 for average tests, described as "Avoiding an obstacle, maneuvering through a narrow spot, tight turn (75-130 degrees)."

So a normal civilian driving manually [1] is rolling 4-5 dice on that test. They can buy 1 hit, so can deal with normal traffic without issue. They have a decent chance of rolling 2 hits, so the second set of situations only causes troubles occasionally. Thus we have harmony between the maths and the reality. A GM handwaving the rolls away for routine stuff -- as is right and proper -- isn't changing the likely outcome of the roll. Everyone is happy.

Now consider 6e. The basic form of the test is still Vehicle Skill + Reaction, but the threshold is now the vehicle handling - which is typically in the range of 3-5 (there are a couple of 2s.) And there's a really stiff dice pool penalty for speed too; a Ford Americar doing 45 mph imposes -3 dice on that test. This suddenly flips things for our civilians. Now, the default outcome for the simplest of tests is going to be a failure. Now we have no harmony between maths and reality, because the the mechanic is that almost every roll will fail. So now the GM call of "you don't roll for routine stuff" becomes crucial, because the second the GM decides "this just stopped being routine" you have every wageslave on the road immediately crashing into each other. There's no graduation to the change of circumstances there. You just fall off a cliff edge.

So sure, as a GM, I don't want to do trivial rolls. But I want the game mechanics to support me by making trivial tasks math out to trivial rolls. 6e's driving system doesn't achieve that. In fact, it's the opposite of that. Every roll is crucial.

Ask yourself this. Was 5e's system broken, in your opinion? Because I thought 5e worked fine here. And 6e is radically different, and not for the better.

[1] Recall that GridGuide is only 90% of downtown and less in the suburbs; most people who have cars are going to drive manually from time to time.

[penllawen]

If they were actually broken I'd agree.

I don't really understand how anyone who thought 5e is OK can't think 6e is broken. They're radically opposed to each other.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Delving into bastardized Gaussian mathematics is quite the obviously opposite thing to simplifying, and personally I preferred qualitative approach where 5e never really specified speeds per se during vehicular scenes.  However I think I was in the minority, so here we are for 6we where vehicles have quantifiable movement rates.  Honestly I expect noone to actually go into the math problems of figuring how many rounds it takes vehicle X to overtake vehicle Y given a head start of Z meters, anyway.  Opposed Piloting checks are so much easier.

I don't have a big problem with the extreme difficulty in passing a handling test.  Here's why:  you're generally never making them.  And when you ARE making them, the realistic outcome probably should be a crash anyway.  Are you swerving around on the interstate, engaging in some combat with a pack of go-gangers?  Guess what, you're not making a handling test.  You're making, if anything, opposed Piloting tests and those are NOT handling tests.  No thresholds on opposed tests.  Now yes, if the go-gangers win the opposed test and corral you into the back of a broken-down 18-wheeler, NOW you make a handling test.  And unless you're a professional stunt driver, you're probably going to slam into that truck.  Everything works out the way it should.

[penllawen]

Delving into bastardized Gaussian mathematics is quite the obviously opposite thing to simplifying, and personally I preferred qualitative approach where 5e never really specified speeds per se during vehicular scenes.  However I think I was in the minority, so here we are for 6we where vehicles have quantifiable movement rates.

I dislike that, so I'm with you here. But that's just my game style (all theatre-of-mind), and the to-the-metre style is just as valid an option. And the extra detail is easy to ignore, too.

[Noble Drake]

For me the end goal is fun. And piloting checks, in my opinion, should be a "HELL YEAH!!!! WHHOOOO! / OH NO!!!" moments on the table. Otherwise, rolling for nonsense will just bog down the session.

Good RPG systems should have cohesion between the narrative and the mechanics.

Consider SR5. A piloting test is Vehicle Skill + Reaction, limited by the vehicle's handling. This has a difficulty of 1 for easy tests, described as "Merging, passing, sudden stop, drift or gradual turn (less than 75 degrees).". It has a threshold of 2 for average tests, described as "Avoiding an obstacle, maneuvering through a narrow spot, tight turn (75-130 degrees)."

So a normal civilian driving manually [1] is rolling 4-5 dice on that test. They can buy 1 hit, so can deal with normal traffic without issue. They have a decent chance of rolling 2 hits, so the second set of situations only causes troubles occasionally. Thus we have harmony between the maths and the reality. A GM handwaving the rolls away for routine stuff -- as is right and proper -- isn't changing the likely outcome of the roll. Everyone is happy.

Now consider 6e. The basic form of the test is still Vehicle Skill + Reaction, but the threshold is now the vehicle handling - which is typically in the range of 3-5 (there are a couple of 2s.) And there's a really stiff dice pool penalty for speed too; a Ford Americar doing 45 mph imposes -3 dice on that test. This suddenly flips things for our civilians. Now, the default outcome for the simplest of tests is going to be a failure. Now we have no harmony between maths and reality, because the the mechanic is that almost every roll will fail. So now the GM call of "you don't roll for routine stuff" becomes crucial, because the second the GM decides "this just stopped being routine" you have every wageslave on the road immediately crashing into each other. There's no graduation to the change of circumstances there. You just fall off a cliff edge.

So sure, as a GM, I don't want to do trivial rolls. But I want the game mechanics to support me by making trivial tasks math out to trivial rolls. 6e's driving system doesn't achieve that. In fact, it's the opposite of that. Every roll is crucial.

Ask yourself this. Was 5e's system broken, in your opinion? Because I thought 5e worked fine here. And 6e is radically different, and not for the better.

[1] Recall that GridGuide is only 90% of downtown and less in the suburbs; most people who have cars are going to drive manually from time to time.

I've been thinking about this while I slowly absorb the new rules content getting ready to run my first longer-term SR6 game...

To me, many of the prior editions' driving rules did a good job at letting a "normal driver" do the kind of driving called out by the rules as the low-end of what to roll for (like when the rules call out the difficulty of merging as quoted). But then you'd have a dedicated rigger making even the most difficult listed examples of activities with almost-assured precision straight out of character creation.

The result was that I never really called for any vehicle tests at all unless it was a contest between two relatively equal operators in two relatively equal vehicles, and that meant that I basically never had anyone rolling vehicle tests.

So the SR6 rules being written with a completely different intent seemingly behind them - the "normal driver" stuff being un-rolled by design, and the rules around rolls making it so that a dedicated rigger is needed for fair chances of success on what rolls the system does call for - is something I am, without having run the rules through their paces yet, optimistic about. Rolling dice is only fun if it feels like it matters, and these rules look (so far at least) like it will feel like it matters... and that throwing a bunch of points into piloting skill won't feel like over-kill or wasted karma, especially if the team is stuck with a hard to handle or lower-performance vehicle.

That said, what a weird thing to draw me back to signing in to this place instead of just lurking to read.

[Michael Chandra]

It's a trap. We hooked you.