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WoW Board Game, Shadowrun 4.0, and City of Heroes RPG
Among the many announcements made at the GAMA Trade show this week, one of the most exciting is the revelation that Shadowrun 4.0 is on the horizon, to be released at this year's Gen Con game fair. Other news includes a World of Warcraft board game, an "Ultimate" version of Rifts, the Production Schedule for Dungeons and Dragons for 2005, a City of Heroes Table-Top RPG, and a 10th Anniversary Settlers of Catan edition. From the Shadowrun Website: "The core mechanics are completely revised to be simpler and more streamlined for quicker, easier and more consistent play. Matrix 2.0! An all-new level of wireless "augmented reality" overlays the real world, unleashing hackers to be mobile digital wizards."
was the one gaming system I played the most of, including Palladium and D&D. Hell, I didn't even think it was still around. Time to break out my 'decker I guess!
Keen idea man lynches
And even then, it's still more fun than the FFXI boardgame.
It comes with 20 sculpted blue crabs, which represent the monsters you'll be fighting.
To start play, you need to roll 1d10.
- On 10, you find a WHM who you can group with. (Healer)
- On 9, you find either a BLM or RNG, your choice. (Damage dealer)
- On 8, you find either a PLD or NIN, your choice. (Tank)
- On 7, you find either a BRD or RDM, your choice. (Dispel/Refresh Bitch)
- On 6 or 5, you find either a WAR, THF, DRK, MNK, SMN, or SAM, your choice. (Cannon Fodder)
- On 4, you find a BST looking for a group, for some reason. (Soloer)
- On 3 or 2, you find there are five DRGs are looking for a group. But they're a DRG, so who cares? (Who cares?)
- On 1, a party member gets fed up with waiting and leaves. (Care Bear)
Repeat this process until you finally have a balanced six-member group.
Then roll 1d6.
- On 6, 5, or 4, everyone is all set. Head out.
- On a 3, someone is too cheap to pay for a chocobo, so you have to drop them.
- On a 2, someone is missing their chocobo license for some reason, so you have to drop them.
- On a 1, someone is missing a teleport crystal that they should have gotten ages ago so you have to drop them.
If you had to drop anyone, go back to the previous step.
Finally, you can start fighting crabs. Roll a 1d10.
- On 10, you kill the crab and get 140XP.
- On 9, 8, 7, 6, or 5, your damage dealers miss due to poor gear. Roll again.
- On 4, your RDM or BRD doesn't have Dispel or Magic Finale and you all die.
- On 3, your healer decides to go AFK without telling anyone, and you all die.
- On 2, your tank decides to go AFK without telling anyone, and you all die.
- On 1, you party too close to Chinese gil farmers who train the entire zone onto your party and laugh as you all die.
Once you gain 20,000 XP, you gain a level and move on to the Gil Farming section!...
It sounds a bit like they took a page from CyberGeneration, the followup to Cyberpunk published in the mid-90's. Basically they handled it by stating that most areas were on a WiFi-esque extension of the Internet that caused programs and data to manifest as three-dimensional images in the real world. Pity they couldn't come up with a better name for it than "Virtuality".
I for one do not believe in the creation of simplified rules for any RPG by Fanpro. DSA, which is quite important in Germany and belongs also to Fanpro is horrible complicated in the forth Edition. And when I take a look at the Shadowrun Homepage, I see the "Errata" Button rising its ugly head (which is the toombstone of modern roleplaying in my opinion.)
Check out the pictures of the new Settlers game... the hexes are fully painted sculpted 3D pieces the size of your hand!
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling