Quote from: Celestial;7761181. While the physical intro box set has no release date, it has already been released electronically.  You can find it here.

Thank you! I did not realize these were the same product. I'll go grab that today.

Your other comments are part of the reason I tend to pick up PDFs of newer products. The old books aren't changing anymore, so picking up something used will have the same value all the time. Picking up a new book and then having to hunt down errata can be a pain.

Quote from: CRKrueger;776106SR2 by far.

SR1 - a wondrous mess

SR3 - think 3.0-3.5 ramping up of complexity, with GURPS-level point buy

SR4 - Like 4e, Unified Field Theory/Balance Uber Alles - everyone plays the same.

SR5 - Cleanup and fix SR4, don't care enough to know whether it succeeds or not, but it's full of dissociated stuff like Cyberware only functions at partial capacity unless you turn wireless access on, at which point you can be hacked, therefore giving hackers something to do in a firefight. :rolleyes:

I have to agree. 1e was wonky. 2e seems to have got about everything right, and 3e seemed to be the complexity and power creep edition.

At certain point with extreme cyberware, you are playing a robot. I play a Full Conversion Cyborg in Rifts and my only meaty bits is a brain and some random chunks kept in an internal fridge.

I am mixed on the idea of charging for "cosmetic stuff". If Essence is your "life aura", then anything that messes with that aura, even diminishing it temporarily, affects Essence.

I am not sure where the line is for cosmetics that affect your life aura.

I think I may draw the line between biosculpting and attaching non-biological parts. AKA, elf ears grown and molded from your own flesh sounds fine. A LED glowing retina? That's un-biological.

But "style over substance" is crucial for cyberpunk. If style isn't supported, then all you get is combat builds.

I guess part of the issue is Cyberpunk vs. Transhumanism. Many Transhumanists believe we can hold onto our humanity as we leave our meat and many Cyberpunkers believe we lose our humanity as we lose our meat.

Unfortunately, it's often the case in RPGs that the fiction doesn't jive with actual play / mechanics. When I think of how I want to Shadowrun to feel at the table, its all about what I read in the novels and imagined in my head.

That's my issue with Warhammer vs. the novels too. However FOR ME, I find it easier to hammer the WFRP and Dark Heresy rules to make them behave and create the feel I want at the table. Shadowrun has too much crunch FOR ME to be able to achieve that.

I'd definitely pick up the pdfs of the boxed set(s) right now (there's also the "Alphaware" boxed set), before the hardcopies.  You lose out on some of the awesome, well, boxed-set feel, but you'll get the chance to read over everything, and if you buy both of them (scroll down for the details) you can get a coupon code that can save you money if/when you decide to buy the physical copies, too.

I had a hand in some of the boxed set writing (the character dossiers and fiction are mine, anyone that liked the cover characters from SR5 and that associated intro fic, there's lots more of them in the boxed sets), so I won't pretend to be unbiased about the content.    That said, I will acknowledge that -- again -- there were some editorial issues, particularly when the boxed sets were split into two products.  I assembled an errata document and got it to the editors prior to what I was told was the cutoff date to see the issues resolved before things went to print, but I haven't heard anything back since then, so I can't vouch for whether the corrections were made.

Editorial concerns are, to put it bluntly, a hot mess right now.  There are limits to what we can say (NDAs prevent us from discussing backstage conversations), but, yes, things are pretty terrible lately as far as editing/errata goes.  Some of us have assembled lengthy errata documents (like for the core SR5) and then editorial only cleared like four pages of errata (some of which, being incomplete or incorrect, introduced new problems).  Other times we've got proofing notes we know we sent in, but the errors we marked were never acted on.

It's been a frustrating time to write for 'em, lately, and that's kind of also helped push me towards more fiction, less crunch, to be honest.

Quote from: CRKrueger;776106...Cyberware only functions at partial capacity unless you turn wireless access on...

What. The. Shit.  That's fucking stupid as hell.  If my arm had WiFi I'd yank the fucking chip.

Quote from: ThatChrisGuy;776300What. The. Shit.  That's fucking stupid as hell.  If my arm had WiFi I'd yank the fucking chip.

Good news, your arm doesn't.

The idea behind wireless bonuses was simple -- in SR4, everyone talked all the time about how everything was wireless, and how hackers could then hack that shit.  Thing was, in-game, nothing was actually really wireless, because players didn't get anything for their stuff being wireless, so every PC ever had gone retro-tech and had their stuff plugged into other stuff, and blah blah blah the fluff all said one thing, but the crunch didn't line up.  Quite a few players really liked the idea of being able to hack stuff, but (unsurprisingly) didn't like the idea of their stuff being able to be hacked.

SR5 set out to fix that with the carrot and stick method.  If you leave your wireless enabled and make your stuff hackable, you get a bonus somewhere.  Your wireless shit gets extra data from cloud computing or whatever, and voila, you get an extra die, can control something via mental command (so it's a free instead of simple action), or you get some other sort of benefit.

So you can choose to leave your wireless turned on, or you can run secure and keep your wireless turned off.  It's your call.

Was the implementation perfect?  Nope.  Blah blah blah NDA blah blah blah, but there were very different ideas about how powerful the wireless bonus should be, how the wireless bonus should work, and things like that.

I think it's a great idea, but I think it has uneven implementation...that said, I think it's not nearly as bad as a great many people say it is.  Lots of folks hear the basic idea, and leap to the worst possible conclusion (like you just did).  Not everything has a wireless option, for starters, and even if you DO have a piece of wireless-enabled gear, and even if you DO decide that the bonus is worth the risk, and even if you DO turn your wireless on, the honest truth is that normally it's not a great idea for an enemy decker to make a play for it -- he can spend several actions trying to hack your smartlink in order to make you lose your smartlink bonus (oh no?), or he can just fucking shoot at you and make you lose your smartlink bonus and all your blood and life and hopes and dreams.

Wireless stuff is a neat idea, and it provides deckers with cool options, sometimes.  If someone thinks wireless-enabled gear is an auto-hack, they're very wrong, and if someone thinks hacking gear is an auto-win (or that having their gear hacked is an auto-lose), they're also very wrong.

Quote from: Critias;776306I think it's a great idea, but I think it has uneven implementation...that said, I think it's not nearly as bad as a great many people say it is.  Lots of folks hear the basic idea, and leap to the worst possible conclusion (like you just did).  Not everything has a wireless option, for starters, and even if you DO have a piece of wireless-enabled gear, and even if you DO decide that the bonus is worth the risk, and even if you DO turn your wireless on, the honest truth is that normally it's not a great idea for an enemy decker to make a play for it -- he can spend several actions trying to hack your smartlink in order to make you lose your smartlink bonus (oh no?), or he can just fucking shoot at you and make you lose your smartlink bonus and all your blood and life and hopes and dreams.

Thanks for the explanation.  I still think it's dumb, but I have an exceptionally low opinion of wireless security in the real world so that likely colors my opinion.

If I were playing or running a game 2e would be my preference. Is it true 5e offers 1/2 character build schemes again? I loved that.

What's a 1/2 character build?

Quote from: Marleycat;776404Is it true 5e offers 1/2 character build schemes again? I loved that.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.  SR5 uses the priority chart again, but I don't think I've ever heard it referred to in that way, so I'm not sure if that's what you mean (but it was the first "build scheme again" thing to pop into my head).

Quote from: Will;776409What's a 1/2 character build?

You go A, B, C, D. And it depends on class;/race on which ones you prioritize. It's a middle ground point buy system similar to White Wolf but with harder limits.

Quote from: Marleycat;776412You go A, B, C, D. And it depends on class;/race on which ones you prioritize. It's a middle ground point buy system similar to White Wolf but with harder limits.

The MUD allowed both. Either the ABCD or the point buy systems.

Quote from: Marleycat;776412You go A, B, C, D. And it depends on class;/race on which ones you prioritize. It's a middle ground point buy system similar to White Wolf but with harder limits.

Yeah, we normally call that "the priority chart" or "priority chargen."  You'll be happy to hear it's the default method for SR5 (though we've got a book on the way that's going to offer some alternatives, point-buy and that sort of thing).

Quote from: Critias;776306If someone thinks wireless-enabled gear is an auto-hack, they're very wrong, and if someone thinks hacking gear is an auto-win (or that having their gear hacked is an auto-lose), they're also very wrong.

However, if they think the rule has absolutely no rooting at all in setting logic then they are very right, because the only possible reason for the rule is for Hackers to have more to do in combat.  Period.Full.Stop.

I liked your Novella though.

Quote from: Critias;776306So you can choose to leave your wireless turned on, or you can run secure and keep your wireless turned off.  It's your call.

I'm cool with that.

It's reward/risk and that's good for most games.