The Staff of the Messanger: A media and gaming blog
July 2, 2010 2:22 PM Subscribe
The Staff of the Messanger: A media and gaming blog
In the depths of my year long unemployment, I've relaunched my blog. It's a personal blog, and since most of what I do is consume media, it's mostly going to be about media. The big attraction for anyone with interest in tabletop roleplaying games is that I'm going to be talking about and posting material from my ongoing Shadowrun campaign.
So far on the Shadowrun front I've posted an introduction, commentary and notes for the introductory run, my thoughts on the most recent session I ran, my file on the runner's contacts, with some commentary, and my house rule revision of combat spell drain. Eventually I'll be posting NPC character sheets and chunks of adventures I've written.
My SR posts presuppose the reader's knowledge of the setting and the 4th edition ruleset, as explaining both of those is outside the scope of what I can reasonably do in a blog, but anyone interested in roleplaying should find most of my posts at least mildly interesting. I'm also playing in an irregular 3.5 D&D campaign right now, and may join a D&D 4th Edition game soon, so I'll probably talk about those after games, as well. I'll definitely post something about my campaign every Wednesday and Saturday (or at least, twice a week), and aim for six to seven posts a week, if not necessarily daily.
In the depths of my year long unemployment, I've relaunched my blog. It's a personal blog, and since most of what I do is consume media, it's mostly going to be about media. The big attraction for anyone with interest in tabletop roleplaying games is that I'm going to be talking about and posting material from my ongoing Shadowrun campaign.
So far on the Shadowrun front I've posted an introduction, commentary and notes for the introductory run, my thoughts on the most recent session I ran, my file on the runner's contacts, with some commentary, and my house rule revision of combat spell drain. Eventually I'll be posting NPC character sheets and chunks of adventures I've written.
My SR posts presuppose the reader's knowledge of the setting and the 4th edition ruleset, as explaining both of those is outside the scope of what I can reasonably do in a blog, but anyone interested in roleplaying should find most of my posts at least mildly interesting. I'm also playing in an irregular 3.5 D&D campaign right now, and may join a D&D 4th Edition game soon, so I'll probably talk about those after games, as well. I'll definitely post something about my campaign every Wednesday and Saturday (or at least, twice a week), and aim for six to seven posts a week, if not necessarily daily.
I assure you, as soon as the D&D 4E campaign gets going, I will start talking about how my DM is running it. It just has to start first.
posted by Caduceus at 5:59 PM on July 12, 2010
posted by Caduceus at 5:59 PM on July 12, 2010
I played a little Shadowrun 1E. Did they do anything interesting system-wise in terms of updates?
posted by yeloson at 5:08 PM on July 13, 2010
posted by yeloson at 5:08 PM on July 13, 2010
I guess that depends on what you consider interesting. They've updated it quite a lot (it's up to 4th Edition, now). It's better balanced and significantly less complicated. They've eliminated target numbers, instead moving to a d6 based system kind of like White Wolf's where any 5 or a 6 is a "hit" and you need a certain number of hits to succeed at a task. There are now 9 or 10 purchased stats instead of 6 and some derived ones. They've moved the timeline ahead 20 years since 1E, and the Matrix is now Wireless and integrates into the main game far better. The vehicle rules are still kind of a mess, but can be dealt fairly stress free if the GM is willing to ad lib some, and since few other systems have ever done modern or futuristic vehicles well without focusing the entire game around them, I'm not surprised. Magic is still a little unbalanced; the entry cost is too low for something that's supposedly as rare as it is, and it's hard to challenge magical characters without other magical encounters, but it can be improved some with house rules.
Over all, some things are still too complex, and other things are glossed over without enough detail paid attention to them, but that's probably the case for most systems, and since preference for where that balance should fall is different for everyone, I think they've done a pretty good job. It's a big improvement over SR2 and 3 (I never read or played 1E). Also I simply LOVE the setting; it's probably my favorite single spec-fic setting ever, which is why I'm running it instead of something I like the system for more (though I'm not sure what that would be).
posted by Caduceus at 9:47 AM on July 14, 2010
Over all, some things are still too complex, and other things are glossed over without enough detail paid attention to them, but that's probably the case for most systems, and since preference for where that balance should fall is different for everyone, I think they've done a pretty good job. It's a big improvement over SR2 and 3 (I never read or played 1E). Also I simply LOVE the setting; it's probably my favorite single spec-fic setting ever, which is why I'm running it instead of something I like the system for more (though I'm not sure what that would be).
posted by Caduceus at 9:47 AM on July 14, 2010
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I'll definitely be interested to hear how folks are running 4E, since Quests, Stunt rules (pg. 42) and Skill Challenges have a big effect on how things run.
posted by yeloson at 11:57 AM on July 12, 2010