Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Cubby on <05-29-19/1306:12>
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Welcome to this week’s Shadowrun, Sixth World update! For this week’s post, we’ve scoured various internet outposts to find some common questions about Sixth World, and asked Jason Hardy, Shadowrun line developer, to answer.
Is Sixth World an attempt to simply fix the problems that some saw in Fifth Edition, or is it more of a ground-up re-envisioning of the Shadowrun game as a whole?
Definitely closer to the latter. I wouldn’t say it’s a total re-envisioning—we still have dice pools of D6s, we have the same attributes, and many aspects are the same as previous editions. But we did not want to simply tweak or adjust Fifth Edition–we wanted this to be a whole new edition, with new concepts and a different feel. We also wanted to streamline the game—which is the subject of the next question!
(https://i.ibb.co/3ryxbvk/SR6-55-Purple-Urple-Jack-Hoyle-FINAL-PROOF.jpg) (https://ibb.co/xCSnbY3)
In streamlining the Sixth World rules, did the developers take any cues from other game systems and their recent editions on what to do or not do?
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: I play games a lot, so I’m always looking at lessons to learn from other games. In particular, I looked at a lot of ways of making adjustment to dice and dice pools, to see how the math on each of those work out. Adjusting threshold numbers, adding more dice, adding +1 to a die, re-rolling a die—all of those have different effects, and knowing what those effects are was important in designing the game (I have a lovely spreadsheet with fun stats!).
I also looked at one element crucial to role-playing games, and that is giving a range of characters meaningful choices. Without going into details, I’ve seen games that do a great job of it, and I’ve seen games where some types of characters seem to only be able to choose from a small range of actions, so they end up picking between one or two alternatives most of the time. We tried to emulate the former!
Who did the developers turn to for input on revising the rules for Sixth World? How was the system playtested and what tweaks were made as a result?
Lots of people! The initial phase of development was more of a reaching-out phase—we spoke with people who weren’t in the trenches of day-to-day Shadowrun work to get their thoughts on different ways Shadowrun could reinvent itself, so that we could get fresh ideas. We also reached out to freelancers working on Shadowrun, especially those with lots of in-the-trenches gaming experience.
Playtesting went through several phases (fun fact: the core playtest document was updated and re-circulated 12 different times during the playtest process). Throughout the process, I ran games with a variety of people—Catalyst staff, experienced Shadowrun players, and people new to Shadowrun. The freelancers working on Shadowrun ran several playtests as we were in the early stages of forming the main structure of the game.
Once we had a basic structure in place, the playtest broadened. We have a large group of non-staff, non-freelancer playtesters we use for a lot of different games, and many of them stepped in to run games. This gave us the perspective of people coming to the ruleset with fresh eyes, having not been involved in any of the early development of this game or in any writing of Fifth Edition rules.
The changes from this process are numerous. A few examples:
* The very first set of playtest rules had a lot of what is now part of the Edge in a separate sub-system. Playtesters thought it would be good to combine all the systems into Edge. That was a good idea.
* There were many playtest ideas on ways to reconfigure skills to make them easier to handle while also providing ways to make a range of characters. The Specialization and Expertise system came out of that.
* Early playtest documents focused on the Combat uses of Edge. The intention was always to expand it, but that was given special urgency by playtesters emphasizing that Edge needed to be woven into multiple areas of gameplay.
* Playtesting is also good for making small tweaks—damage values, Karma costs of qualities, drain values of spells, and more were adjusted in playtesting.
(https://i.ibb.co/LzdL0K5/SR6-15-Street-Shaman-Peter-Tikos-FINAL-PROOF.jpg) (https://ibb.co/rG2CQ9s)
How long will it take for the various sourcebooks for all the character classes to come out? Will I have to “downgrade” my character to what’s available in the core rules until those books are available?
The combat sourcebook will come out by the end of this year. As with Fifth Edition, the other core books will then come out regularly as they are developed and written. We will have a character conversion guide that will help with bringing a character into the new edition, but we simply cannot put put rules that covered more than 2,000 pages in Fifth Edition in a single burst, especially since the last books developed for Fifth Edition haven’t come out yet, so I was working on them while also working on Sixth World. Getting all the core books out in a single year would require at least a year where I wasn’t working on anything else, and that’s not something I can do!
When will Missions change over to using Sixth World rules, and will my character have to be reset to use only what’s in the core book?
If all works the way we have planned, the first Neo-Tokyo Missions will be dual-statted for both Fifth Edition and Sixth World. We hope those will start flowing out this fall. That means you should have at least half a year before having to make the conversion to Sixth World to play Missions. If the dual-statting goes smoothly, we can explore extending it.
Have you made any changes to riggers, their rules, or how they’re incorporated in runs? Will rules for riggers come earlier in the release schedule than in the past?
Yes. Vehicle stats are greatly changed—in some ways, they’re one of the ways the rules became a bit more complicated, if only so vehicle movement could be tracked without the abstracted chase rules of previous editions. Matrix rules have been changed, so with them rigging rules have been adjusted, though that level of detail is beyond the scope of this post! Between drone rigging, vehicle operation, and taking over other vehicles and drones, riggers should find plenty to do.
The timing for the rigger book and other books has not been decided yet, though I’ll just take this opportunity to point out that Rigger 5.0 came out more than three years ago, less than halfway through the Fifth Edition cycle!
What would you say to those who are concerned about the reduced number of Skills in Sixth World?
First, the goal of specializations and expertise is to give players a way to differentiate characters with this smaller skill set. I hope that will be useful and give characters their own feel. Second, if, in the end, you prefer the longer skill list of previous editions to the list in Sixth World, that’s okay. I long ago came to grips with the fact that no single edition of Shadowrun will be everything to everyone. Everyone will like the things they like, and I just hope Sixth World provides rules and tools a substantial group of players can use to have fun!
Can you talk a little more about Edge, and why Sixth Edition changes how it is used?
The process of how Edge evolved is the longest, most detailed process in the whole game. So I’ll try to make a long story short! Ish. So, the first thing I focused on when it came time to move past brainstorming and put rules to paper was combat. I wanted the whole combat process to move smoother and for combat to resolve faster. I saw a lot of things to tweak the process, but in the end, many of them boiled down to one thing: It takes a long time to calculate dice pools. Modifiers can come from a lot of places, and remembering to look at all these places, while also remembering the size of the modifiers, can be complex. I wanted to streamline that whole process. The first step in that was combining a lot of weapon stats into a single number called Attack Rating. That number is compared to a Target’s Defense Rating, and, in the initial system, if your Attack Rating was sufficiently higher than the Defense Rating, you’d get what was called a Chip, which would represent your accumulated advantage in the fight. The idea was that other things, such as good tactical execution, would give you more Chips. Then playtesting showed us that the Chip system had similarities with Edge, and things would work best if Edge was expanded, rather than introducing a new meta-game currency. Once that merger was in place, the work was to find how to implement Edge across the system. So deckers, faces, riggers, technomancers, and whoever else hits the shadows gets a chance to build up Edge and spend it in a spectacular move.
How did you balance the need to streamline the core rules against the complexity and detail that many Shadowrun players enjoy?
That was a tough one! In the end, I think it’s about making a good framework for the game. The basics of Shadowrun are simple—find a skill for the action you’re going to attempt, add ranks in that skill to ranks in an associated attribute, roll that many D6s, and count how many 5s and 6s you get. You’re either trying to beat a threshold established by the gamemaster or the number of hits from another character. That part isn’t hard to master. The complications come with all the attachments, which means that in the end, it’s about not overloading the core system with attachments. The way Edge works in Sixth World gives players plenty of opportunities for their choices to have and effect in the game while making it easier to determine what that effect is.
Why should an established Shadowrun player pick up Sixth World?
For the adventure and challenge! Game rules offer structure and limits, with the players seeing what cool things they can pull off within that structure. Just like designing a new character, new rules give you a chance to see what you can make happen with new trappings. In Sixth World, combat should move faster, and your opportunities to do spectacular things should come about more frequently. You also might have an easier time getting people who found the longer Fifth Edition book too daunting into the game!
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I loved SR5, but I literally had to make the character for 1 player, help a second and math-check a third (even with HeroLab!) during character advancement. Can't wait for SR6 to improve on that.
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I’m interested to see how they have balanced have balanced and streamlined the system with detail/crunch.
Happy to see that the combat supplement is scheduled for later this year.
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I need my Martial Arts fix! O_O
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I've been through chargen several times with GMs who limited the books that were available to use, which taught me is how dependent some concepts are on the supplemental materials. For example, I can build a street samurai that I'm 90% happy with while only using the core rulebook. I can make a passable decker and a decent magician too. But trying to build an adept without Street Grimoire is an exercise in frustration, especially when you know what's available but you can't have it.
When it comes to SR6, a lot of it will depend on what makes it into the core rulebook and what doesn't become available until later. I think we won't really know how important the supplements are until they come out and we can see things with the benefit of hindsight. Ideally the core rulebook with include the "need to have" items and the supplements will be the "nice to have" options, although I acknowledge that everyone draws that line in a different place.
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The one thing that I hope they don't repeat is introducing major limitations in supplements. If very much feels like you have a shiny new toy and then a little while later are told you can't play with it half of the time (I'm looking at you, background count and spirit index).
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The one thing that I hope they don't repeat is introducing major limitations in supplements. If very much feels like you have a shiny new toy and then a little while later are told you can't play with it half of the time (I'm looking at you, background count and spirit index).
Eh, it makes sense that detailed limitations come out later (like in SR4 and SR5) because there's too much detail to go into otherwise. And Background Count still was a useful tool to nerf mages sometimes, even if the description was a bit wonky.
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Sounds very promising. I like that Edge is becoming it's own thing, so it will (hopefully) make it more fun and easier.
Give me my Face Adept rulez!
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The one thing that I hope they don't repeat is introducing major limitations in supplements. If very much feels like you have a shiny new toy and then a little while later are told you can't play with it half of the time (I'm looking at you, background count and spirit index).
Eh, it makes sense that detailed limitations come out later (like in SR4 and SR5) because there's too much detail to go into otherwise. And Background Count still was a useful tool to nerf mages sometimes, even if the description was a bit wonky.
That’s the problem with background count in my opinion. It’s a crutch instead of actually fixing mages. Mages shouldn’t need nerfs as they should be balanced and things like background count are then used infrequently to help highlight a character.
Spirit index I felt was lame as it answered a setting question that shouldn’t be answered.
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BGC's aren't anything new to 5e. I have no idea why they weren't treated as a core mechanic in 5e (since Noise was).
But in 6e, it makes some sense that they're not in the core book since they weren't in 5e's either. Doubly so with cutting the page count down in 6th world.
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That’s the problem with background count in my opinion. It’s a crutch instead of actually fixing mages. Mages shouldn’t need nerfs as they should be balanced and things like background count are then used infrequently to help highlight a character.
Basically, this. The better way to handle mage's long-term absurdity is three simple changes:
1). Maximum limit to magic attribute. Sure, dragons, immortal elves, and other such deeply supernatural beings might have no or extremely high caps, but our very mortal shadowrunner PCs should have a modest one.
2). Maximum rating of 6, maybe even 4, on foci.
3). Less spell options that render mundane skills obsolete. Analyze device, physical mask, ect.
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That’s the problem with background count in my opinion. It’s a crutch instead of actually fixing mages. Mages shouldn’t need nerfs as they should be balanced and things like background count are then used infrequently to help highlight a character.
Basically, this. The better way to handle mage's long-term absurdity is three simple changes:
1). Maximum limit to magic attribute. Sure, dragons, immortal elves, and other such deeply supernatural beings might have no or extremely high caps, but our very mortal shadowrunner PCs should have a modest one.
2). Maximum rating of 6, maybe even 4, on foci.
3). Less spell options that render mundane skills obsolete. Analyze device, physical mask, ect.
I guess I'd focus more on buffing mundanes first. Like make essence a magically active only concern, or at least make essence a stat mundanes could raise. As while mages have long term absurdity, I'm not opposed to long term absurdity, I just think everyone should have access to that.
As for those specific suggestions
1, I think only comes into effect in really long running campaigns. Raising stats past 6 is expensive. I'm not opposed but I'm not sure something that only effect 200+karma groups helps much. Out of the box mages frequently have too much raw power, and I'd like to focus on that first.
2 I'm not too bothered by ratings but the core mechanic/cost. A power focus is extra dice for almost everything and a rating 6 is 36 karma, raising your magic form 6 to 7 is 35 which is only 1 die. That is insane savings. If a rating 6 power focus was 120 karma I'd be fine with that. As is even rating 4 seems too much because they are so damn cheap.
3. That for me is what the mage is supposed to be, a more utility bag of trick character instead of a juggernaut of destruction. But like there is nano paste, tech invisibility clothes polymers, lock pick sets etc that allow mundanes to bypass skills to a large degree. But spells should be significantly more expensive. And maybe have prerequisites. You shouldn't jump form 0 combat spells to comet. And while analyze device conceptually isn't bad how its written is too broad. Honestly if it only gave you dice for a knowledge skill tests about the device I'd be fine with it. Also if something is super expensive to pull off for tech like wired reflexes a single spell should not be able to equal or beat it. Its okay for mages to always be slower. Also some things just need to go away hard, like possession traditions. Or at least reign them in a lot.
I'd also like to increase tech options and stop lame setting reasons why those are evil or backfire now.
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I agree with a lot of Shinobi's points.
I love playing magic users in Shadowrun, but Magic as a whole is not well balanced.
- A new spell costs 5 karma. What can a mundane do with 5 karma that's equivalent to the functionality and versatility of a new spell?
- Your first initiation is 13 karma, or less with discounts. With that, an adept can upgrade their Improved Reflexes, or pick up Improved Physical Attribute. 13 karma is a fraction of the price of what it would cost a mundane to achieve similar results.
- What Shinobi said about power foci.
- Spellcasting as a whole isn't too unbalanced, in my opinion, but summoning is egregious. "Here, let me conjure this being that's as strong as any of us, will do what I say, and if anything happens to it I'll just summon another." Oh, and every mage can do this, and it only takes a few seconds, and statistically the drain will usually be 0.
- Let's not even get into oversummoning and overcasting.
Again, I love magic, but I would rein it in, both in terms of chargen capabilities and long-term advancement costs.
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Drain will be more average, services will be less due to higher dicepool, drain edging will be far tougher so summoning will become more dangerous and oversummoning will be real hard.
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A rating 6 power focus may be “only” 36 karma but it’s also 108,000 nuyen at availability 24. It isn’t every runners toy
Edit: math correction.
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A rating 6 power focus may be “only” 36 karma but it’s also 108,000 nuyen at availability 24. It isn’t every runners toy
Edit: math correction.
Which is still far cheaper than real upgrades to cyber. And it’s not like mages have other things to blow their money on other than a pimp lifestyle. They gain both money and karma at the same time. They may get the karma first if they were on a direct path for that but odds are they will initiate a time or two first and then by the time they have 36 they already have the cash.
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One thing to keep in mind is that since I couldn't begin to comment on what an "average" home game look likes across the broad spectrum of players our hobby has, my perspective is colored from a Missions lens.
Chicago had over 80 Missions. Neo-Tokyo is going to have at least 30 at minimum. That is the opportunity for quite a lot of karma/nuyen if you consider the average take away is about 6.5/10,000 per Mission before being adjusted by working for the people/man.
That makes raising magic, initiating, and spending karma and nuyen on foci a guarantee. Even in very short game of maybe 5 sessions I would still be throwing my money at initiation and foci because there is literally nothing non-magical that I could purchase that would enhance my character a fraction as much as those two things would. That is just me, however, as I tend to be more than a little bit of a min/maxer.
Shinobi brought up a point I find interesting, which is that he likes the mage to be the swiss army knife. My experience in most every game has been that pretty much all classes/archetypes/builds/ect. can be more than acceptable at killing things if you spend your creation resources to do that. Combat is such a big part of most games that the ways you can successfully build a killer are staggering. Many time, especially with the combat oriented sorts, you wind up with little capability outside of killing. So when you build that skill focused face or decker in shadowrun, that ranger/rogue in dnd to maximize your skill points, that knowledge and lore dot specialized Brujah scholar in vampire but the mage/mage/blood mage (respectively) just cast a spell (or usually ritual in vampire) and do what you do, often better than you do, it really sucks the wind out of the sails of other utility PCs.
I liken the perspective to "Man, I sunk 1/3 to 3/4 of my character's starting resources into being able to do these things for us, but that mage does it all as well or better with just 3/10 of his spells.".
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Every edition of Shadowrun has its problems with being MagicRun.
5e though seems to be the most egregious to me. But maybe that's just because it's the current edition. Still though, there's literally no niche in the game that can't be done better by a magician than by a mundane. Obviously you want a mage to be on point dealing with spirits and hostile mages, sure. But you need a driver? Who needs a Rigger when you can just summon a spirit with the movement critter power. You want some drones to go scout out or help in combat? Lolz, don't be silly. Spirits are way better at both. What about a hacker? Pssht, step aside Decker. The mage has Analyze Device and Enhance Logic/Intuition spells. You're not needed in Shadowrun, either.
If 6e tones down mages, it'll be for the betterment of the game.
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Technically under RAW Movement cannot be used on others because Critter terrain/domain is not defined. But yeah, I screwed up on trying to balance out Movement, and Drones are expensive as heck.
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Sort of long and rambling but it’s early morning and I haven’t had coffee yet. But yeah especially how spirits worked in 5e mages were broken. Some spells broke the game as well. Though things like mask I think worked great. As on its own it’s just a disguise. But you still have to talk to people, you won’t know passwords, your dna isn’t on file etc. it’s a supplement to help the team do things, buffing the face, decker so all there stuff comes together better. It’s a great teamwork spell.
Thing is I’d like to change that everyone can easily build to be really solid in combat. Competent sure, but a street sam focussed on combat should stand far above a mage, decker, face even if they put resources into it.
The ease of which a mage can branch out is a issue. Which is why I would want a prerequisite system for spells, so it’s not just 5 karma and now you are super good at hiding. Something like to learn improved invisibility you need to know 5 spells in the illusion category. Honestly I’d like more skills for mages like illusion spells was its own skill, but since they went the other way I already know they didn’t do that.
One thing that worries me is from the play example the teams mage took qualities that let her sustain 3 spells without penalty. I think that’s the wrong direction. I would have changed focused concentration to a reduction of the penalty but there would always be one like in previous editions. The metamagic where you could burn people through focusses I’d have made core without a metamagic so mages had to worry about focusing up. Basically what I always thought grounding should have become instead of just removing it. And astral attacks would be able to permanently destroy focuses having you lose money/karma.(can’t remember if they could in 5e)
This may be a table thing but when they removed grounding I saw a massive spike in mage power as suddenly they all had spell locks(sustaining focusses) for a pack of core spells making them combat monsters. Earlier editions none of the mages at my table risked it. Grounding had other issues with spirits but my players usually played shamans and role play wise wouldn’t do that.