No agenda, no rules, few restrictions. For whatever is on your mind...

I decided that we really, really needed a place to interact for Shadowrun.   I suspect that the lack of games probably results from the usual lack of communication.

Mostly the lack of confident GMs it's not a particularly easy game to run online.

Hoi Chummers!

This

I started play by forum on dumpshock which is 'just shadowrun' (and still going). I love the world, but the rules are very very complex. Especially the matrix rules. Explaining that complexity over forum is hard. Tabletop/face to face it's much easier as there is a much higher bandwidth

The other issue I have with SR4 at least is that with the same build points some people can make gods and others the key stone cops. That's true for other game systems of course and a good GM can overcome that (helping the weaker and asking the stronger to tone it back a bit)

I am delighted to see that the Shadowrun 5 matrix rules actually seem to work, and are not too complex (by comparison).

Agreed. Then you mix in all the different rules for riggers whether they’re just sending commands to all drones or jumping in.

On a separate note, just want to throw out some past character names to see who all I’ve games with before: Hive, Mustang, Iron Hide, Vault, Fashionista, and Cheshire.

Hi all! I inherited a copy of the Shadowrun Sixth World rulebook from a friend who passed, and promised to run a game for other friends who played it with my late friend as GM and said they'd never play it again because it took them half the session to create characters, and then the game sucked. I'm taking that as a dare. :)
This message was last edited by the player at 13:38, Fri 04 Aug 2023.

Well Shadowrun does have a little bit more complexity to character creation. One of the killers of a Shadowrun game especially in pbp is the planning phase before a mission of it goes on for too long. Some games I’ve been in have helped that along with the Johnsons being former runners and able to provide at least some information for the players to go on when they do their own recon. Once the missions starts then it’s usually a good pace.

You did it in half a session! Wow! I usually take a couple of days. And that's with a tool (hero labs) to help. It's not the worst system for that sort of thing (Gurps, Hero systems, Mutants and Masterminds... I'm looking at you all) but it's certainly not 'light weight'.

There are three things about it really: the world, the fiction and the system. The world is great. Quite well thought through. A blast to RP in. The fiction (there are a load of paperbacks) are 'OK'. Which is quite high praise for 'game' fiction. And adds quite a lot to the enjoyment of RPing in the world I think.

The system (1 through 4) is ... 'barely adequate'. It's too complex for me to be fully happy with. The earlier editions had computer hacking rules that were so complex every single GM I have played with house ruled their own. I think they have got over that with 5th edition (not totally sure because haven't played it yet, just read it). From what I've read 5th edition is quite a lot more straightforward in a number of ways, so I am looking forward to seeing how that actually works out in play. It certainly gets rid of a load of craziness from earlier edition.

No idea what 6th edition is like

Half a session is really good.   I can usually get through the number crunching in a couple of hours; it's the role-play related stuff that takes me a week or three to figure out.

I refuse to do "get the party together" stuff. Especially online. If I have it my way we start litterally in initiative order. Work out yourselves from there.

Ah we differ there, Sir Swindle. Combat is (IMAO) a speed bump in RPOL. Any time in combat increases the chance of the game dying. Building RP voices, building up character interactions, that's what makes a good movie, book or game.

That's not true tabletop. Tabletop I'm with you: I roll-play instead of role-play (and enjoy it a lot). Combat gets the excitement up and is great. It's the thing to do when people's attention starts wandering

Initiative is a mechanism that was created to solve a table top problem: making the access to the GM in a controlled fashion. That's not needed in RPOL of course, but we 'cargo-cult' it across. I do it too for the few occasions where it matters.

Nothing wrong with starting with a bar room brawl of course (tabletop or RPOL). Or in the middle of a fire fight with flashbacks. In my current game I start everyone in their personal prologue and I've killed a couple of them in the first scene (not perm death of course just part of their intro)

It's more about ensuring that everyone knows what is happening right now and get invested early. Combat is cut and dry, you either posted since the last GM post or you did not. You need to shoot those guys shooting you, you aren't wondering if being the 4th person to chime in on this 5 way conversation stretches credulity.

Don't do five way conversations :) then problem solved. Most threads I run have two or three players in it. Three works really well. Four becomes a crowd.  Occasionally they get together for planning or something, but then they usually have a chairman, lots of side conversations and ... those threads are as hard to run as combat.

But put two or three players into a thread and they'll have a blast chatting or investigating or doing stuff. Takes hardly any effort as they do all the work. Everything grinds to a near halt with combat though, and I have to do a lot more work.

Being lazy I like to dodge that 'more work' as much as possible so I have tweaked the rules systems so that only the players roll the die most of the time. They roll to hit, and they roll to dodge. That way all I have to do is a bit of fluff. You can do that with shadowrun quite easily. Just 'buy hits' for the bad guys (don't do that for the big bads of course... just minions).

I've played in a M&M2 game with you Sir Swindle I think (A long time ago, I haven't played M&M2 for many years). Works there too. Actually better. In shadowrun it changes the die distribution (for the better I think, but it's still a change). In M&M it's identical.

Ya, getting the back and forth die rolling simplified down to one roll is pretty necessary.

I've hit up a few M&M games on here. Tried to run them but it didn't really work out.

I've discovered that the best way to run combat seems to be: "Everyone post their actions and I'll resolve in order".   Otherwise, it takes a week per rather than a day or two.