Shadowrun Shadowrun Returns Pre-Release Thread

[Excidium]

Yeah? Adventuring gear can fall into common sense depending on the GM and the type of adventure.

 

[Jaesun]

Yeah? Adventuring gear can fall into common sense depending on the GM and the type of adventure.

I am intentionally baiting you for a reason. Think about this for a moment. (from a PnP perspective).

 

[Excidium]

I don't get it man.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Just like torches, flasks, ropes , spikes and various other item you need to purchase in D&D when doing a module?

Depends on the character level there. If you're a brand new party of level 1-3ish adventurers sure. If the party's level 10+ and has bags of holding and/or portable holes and shit it's relatively safe to assume some basics like that depending on your DM. And if the DM doesn't want to assume things like that I believe there are a few magic items (I wanna say a cloak) that are basically just full of generic items like that. No more worrying about lugging a trusty 10 foot trap poking pole through narrow dungeon corridors when you've got extra-dimensional bags.

What really gets fun and ridiculous is when you start getting to epic level and you're getting massive piles of treasure and have to work out the logistics of how the fuck you're going to move all that gold around. If you're a wizard you can just pop it on the astral plane or something and hope for the best, but otherwise it involves some effort. That was one thing I liked in Neverwinter Nights 2 actually, when you killed that one dragon and had to have wagons from your keep cart the gold back. Exchanging gold for gems can only help you so much.

No idea on any of this Shadowrun stuff of course since this game'll be my first real encounter with the setting apart from hearing about it vaguely over the years. For example I can understand what Excidium's saying about the ammo, but bullets aren't terribly light. Depending how many bullets get tossed around in a Shadowrun adventure (Again, no idea) I would think weight could be an issue. Especially if you wanted to concern yourself with loose bullets vs magazines/clips. Can understand wanting to abstract it out through. Only so much busywork is entertaining in pen and paper which was largely why I liked D20 so much. I felt like it hit the perfect balance of depth/granularity and ease of use.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

You simply don't get the setting.

Absolutely nothing to do with the setting. Your reasoning for not "needing" it can be applied to any game as seen by some other people even in this thread. "Hey, you can stockpile ammo anyway, why not make it infinite then." And in that same line of reasoning: "You stockpile on health packs and/or reload anyway, why not have health regeneration?".

That's not the same thing and you kn- oh, it's you. Nevermind, then

 

[SCO]

What do i think about the promised mod-ability:
Weidu like programming language (language that operates on game data and can merge many mods by operating on this data) or bust.
Also, some kind of runtime scripts are a must.

 

[Darth Roxor]

You don't track normal ammo mainly because tracking this sort of minutia is a pain in the ass

Nope, you don't track ammo in pnp because the GM does that for you, and tells you 'oops, you are out' at the worst possible moment. Or you don't even know how much ammo you have in the first place :paranoia:


Also, ITT we learn that Baldur's Gate, where a quiver of 99 arrows costs like 5gp, is the pinnacle of ammo management design. And that there are people who actually manage to run out of arrows.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

:paranoia:

WHY FRIEND COMPUTER. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?

 

[evdk]

WHY FRIEND COMPUTER. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!?

Because you touch yourself at night are a mutant communist traitor.

 

[Eyeball]

I hate counting bullets in CRPG unless it fits in well with the game design or settting. It makes sense in JA2 since it's a "management" kind of game and how you've got different types of ammo for different situations, it makes sense in games like Borderlands to have you run out of assault rifle ammo in the middle of a difficult bossfight in order to encourage you to experiment with different types of weapons and it makes sense in FO due to the low supply setting.

Shadowrunners tend to be prepared for their missions on Batman-like levels, so I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that your standard runner is literally clinking as he walks with spare clips and shells. I see no problem with an ammo-less environment. In fact, I considered the "infinite reloads" part of Xcom 2012 to be one of the very few areas in which it was better than the original. Cuts down on tedious micromanagement for your MANY soldiers that didn't really add much to the game while still keeping the tension of not emptying your gun at the wrong time.

 

[Roguey]

Ammo management at least makes automatic fire less of a no-brainer.

Reasons not to use automatic fire in Shadowrun Returns:
It'll use up all your AP for that turn (everyone starts with two, they have the ability to upgrade to 3 plus one more temporarily with an item/spell buff)
You take an accuracy penalty
You'll use up more of your magazine and have to spend AP to reload more often

Although this also depends heavily on what kind of content they'll have.

 

[evdk]

Ammo management at least makes automatic fire less of a no-brainer.

Reasons not to use automatic fire in Shadowrun Returns:
It'll use up all your AP for that turn (everyone starts with two, they have the ability to upgrade to 3 plus one more temporarily with an item/spell buff)

Not necessarily a drawback, depends on the situation. You shouldn't spray'n'pray all the time, anyway.

You take an accuracy penalty

Manageable with the right equipment (harness, stabilizers, etc.). This depends on the level of gear customization that is in the game, admittedly.

You'll use up more of your magazine and have to spend AP to reload more often

If you kill the bastard with autofire, while a series of single shots wouldn't be as effective, this is a non issue. You'd have to reload sooner or later anyway.

Although this also depends heavily on what kind of content they'll have.

Yes, it's situational and we do not know a lot of variables, so it's actually too early to tell one way or the other.

 

[Roguey]

I expect this'll follow the zero-to-god path just like every other thing so auto-fire will likely be the default action by endgame regardless of whether or not ammo is limited.

 

[hoverdog]

I'll reiterate: Limiting ammo that's cheap and easily buyable makes only sense when there's some sort of weight and/or size restriction system (see: JA2). If there isn't one, there's no real point of doing that.
However, I find no excuses for having infinite special bullets.

 

[Roguey]

They said there'll be a limited number of item slots in your inventory, but your personal stash at home will let you store whatever.

I doubt special bullets exist. They've shown that grenades are limited.

 

[hoverdog]

I think they've mentioned them, but I could be wrong.

 

[Zetor]

Cyberpunk 2020 had mercury bullets. Those'd fuck shit (including the gun) up, man.

 

[Roguey]

I think it's unlikely considering a) SNES and Genesis Shadowruns didn't have it (SNES Shadowrun had unlimited ammo too ) b) "Right now, there are concussion grenades and frag grenades in the game. We don't want this to become GrenadeCommander. But if there's time (yeah, right) we might get some more" and c) "Yes, there will be stores but equipment is not a major part of the game. As you can see, we put our time elsewhere."

 

[Jaesun]

Mitch was on another answering spree, some selected stuff:

A thought occurs. When it comes to the editor, would we be in trouble for reuseing old SR source material like Brain Scan, or Corporate Punishment? What about novel characters like Kyle Teller, or Sam Verner?

Catalyst owns the license for the old tabletop stuff and fully supports people making cool stuff in our editor that reflects the old source material. It's not about licensing or legal b.s. - it's about playing in the world of Shadowrun!

Early editor access should be about a month before release so you have time to play with the editor and have stuff for people to play on day one.

[The Editor]

Q: How rich is or how do you feel in the power of the scripting for this?
A: Happy to answer. First, you don't actually script. Instead, you create a trigger that has a series of "drop down" options to choose from. You then can dig into those options to specify what you want. I think it's pretty sweet. Takes some time to learn but it's FREAKING POWERFUL. We brought in a guy who recently graduated from game design school, gave him a few hours training and he had a full mission in two days.

Hard to answer this question easily. There's no scripting in our editor - everything uses dropdown menus, so there's little to remember and it's hard to make typo errors. That said, it's not dumbed down in any way. It's the SAME editor we used to make the game. That requires it to have power and flexibility. I guess the key thing to ask is, "How logical are you?" If the answer is "pretty logical", I think you'll be able to do some cool stuff. I'm not but I can still put tactical encounters together that are pretty fun because the default AI is pretty good.

Some good news for newbie editor people: first, we plan to make is so you can open our levels and see how we scripted things. That means you'll have some real-world examples to work from. We Robin and Producer Brian plan to put out some "how to" videos and stuff. More on that later.

_______

That's pretty BRO of Catalyst

 

[evdk]

Early editor access should be about a month before release so you have time to play with the editor and have stuff for people to play on day one.

Some good news for newbie editor people: first, we plan to make is so you can open our levels and see how we scripted things.

Now that's pretty cool.

 

[hoverdog]

Harebrained Schemes

 

[eklektyk]

I hate counting bullets in CRPG unless it fits in well with the game design or settting. It makes sense in JA2 since it's a "management" kind of game and how you've got different types of ammo for different situations, it makes sense in games like Borderlands to have you run out of assault rifle ammo in the middle of a difficult bossfight in order to encourage you to experiment with different types of weapons and it makes sense in FO due to the low supply setting.

Shadowrunners tend to be prepared for their missions on Batman-like levels, so I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that your standard runner is literally clinking as he walks with spare clips and shells. I see no problem with an ammo-less environment. In fact, I considered the "infinite reloads" part of Xcom 2012 to be one of the very few areas in which it was better than the original. Cuts down on tedious micromanagement for your MANY soldiers that didn't really add much to the game while still keeping the tension of not emptying your gun at the wrong time.

yeah....
how many times i had to abort mission cos of fucking lobstermans and depleted ammo ....

 

[Kem0sabe]

Great news about the editor. Already sketching some ideas and scenarios to develop with the editor.

 

[SCO]

Hard to answer this question easily. There's no scripting in our editor - everything uses dropdown menus, so there's little to remember and it's hard to make typo errors.

Lol, toy.

 

[Ulminati]

Just saying... I've GM'ed Shadowrun for 3 different groups and played it under 5-6 different GMs.

We had unlimited ammo in Shadowrun PnP.

Every time. EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. TIME.

The houserule is you buy x bullets (100 for single-shot weapons, 1000 for automatics) and it is assumed you always have enough ammo to make it through a run and further ammo costs fall under your lifestyle expenses. Super expensive special ammo is exempt from this (APDS, Chemical rounds filled with nerve gas etc), but noone tracks regular ammo except to know when it is time to reload their current clip.


Because only someone suffering from chronic aspergers thinks it's fun to keep track of individual ammunition in shadowrun pen&paper.