f13.net

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16535 (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16535)

so it looks like there is possibility of seeing a shadowrun MMO in the future...





EDIT: Just for the record, Cyberpunk 2020 is better than Shadowrun.

I'd feel better about this if I had any evidence that Smith & Tinker had something resembling game development talent employed.

After what Microsoft did to shadowrun can anyone really do worse?

Shadowrun, more than almost any other PnP system, really leaned on a good GM and character interaction. Going through the motions of quest x for y xp just won't work. The combat system is also not suited for real time play. It needs turns, much like D&D.

If they find a way to surprise me and make this even remotely playable, I will be overjoyed. I just won't be holding my breath until then.

Everytime a new studio pops up with a connection even remotely tied to Shadowrun, someone brings up "Shadowrun MMO?"...

Then the 'if done right, it would so pwn' comments come...

Hell, if they just bootstrapped multiplayer onto the old Genesis Shadowrun game, it's be better than that shitastic FPS game they released.

I'd be happy if they simply Ported DnD 4.0's online system over to Shadowrun.  People over at Fantasy Grounds were working on conversions, but it's just not the same.  FG unfortunately is near owned by D20.

Shadowrun IMO is one of the greatest all-around games ever designed.  People just usually cant get passed the orcs and dragons aspect.  For pure cyberpunk goodness though, it's hard to beat.

I think a turn-based (or slow timered)  MMO would work well for it.    There's just too much crunch there to do it any other way.

The notion of a Shadowrun MMO induces in me a level of fanboy drooling rivaled only by the idea of a KOTOR MMO.

So how would you design it?  (maybe for the game design forum)

btw: is Shadowrun FPS moddable?

Start the thread and I'd take a run at that.  (I'd do it, but I used up my starting threads in the game design forum quota and want somebody else to get the first shot at it.)

RPG depth with FPS combat.  I want the setting and atmosphere of Shadowrun, but the tabletop gaming rules can go get fucked.  They won't make for a fun MMO, and the fanboys who care about them aren't a market worth catering to on matters of basic design.

so I say again... is Shadowrun PC (FPS) moddable?   :oh_i_see:

Doesn't seem to be any mods available for download. Besides, it's an Xbox Live game, I believe (On PC too)... So that should explain it.

KotOR was RPG with tabletop gaming rules, wasn't it? Not to say if it was fun or not but it did sell shitload of copies. On the other hand FPS-oriented Shadowrun conversion did pretty bad. It's obviously in part due to IP and whatnot, but wouldn't be so fast with claims FPS approach is the shit and tabletop approach is just shit as far as the playerbase is concerned.

As far as MMOs go... the better I like the idea, the more disappointing it all ends up.  MMOs just fuck with my head, I think.  At least the last couple of years. 

He didn't seem to be making a blanket statement that tabletop rules are shit in video games.  Seemed more like he was referring to Shadowrun's P&P mechanics in particular, which I agree, aren't particularly great and aren't needed to make a good Shadowrun game.  It's a P&P game people played more for the setting rather than because they thought the mechanics were good.

Shadowrun 4th Edition is considered a VERY good game mechanically within the industry, not great but far from bad.  Some of the older versions sucked ass, so make sure you actually cite which version you talk about before one also makes blanket statements saying the game mechanics suck.

It's like saying DnD rules suck; absurd considering how many rulesets there are. 
Not to mention, the onus is still placed on the GM how he implements the rules and which variants he/she uses.

Personally, I'm thinking Hellgate: London (but finished) with Shadowrun backdrop and the congregation areas are used to gather other players to perform runs with.  The Street Samurai and Mage/Shaman is already there, just add full Decker and Greaser support.

I'd prefer a Cyberpunk MMO over Shadowrun.  I seriously just want a good sci-fi'ish game.  And all the elves and magic and crap in Shadowrun would just be meh for me.

I'm kind of a loony radical in that my ideal RPG is just a shooter with an inventory screen, branching dialogue, and an open world.  I mean I loved KOTOR, but combat was the weakest part of the game.  Give me all that depth and story, but attach it to a combat engine that's actually fun in its own right.

Because if you released KOTOR combat as a standalone game, nobody would fucking touch it.  They'd go "Okay, so you push the Force Storm button until you win.  Where's the god damned gameplay?"

I'm fair certain that we have had this brought up before, but a huge problem with a Cyberpunk MMO (as much as some of us would love to see one) is the combat. The speed and lethality makes it decidedly unfun for the average MMO player.

Sounds a bit like Mass Effect to me.

Well I'm a "loony radical" when it comes to RPG combat, but I don't think I will be for much longer.  It seems to be the way the wind is blowing these days.  Between being able to circle-strafe stuff to death in Elder Scrolls and GTA adding character stats to go with its world-ness, there's been sort of a convergence going on for a while now.

Not sure though if that's fault of combat mechanics on the whole, or simply result of bits being unbalanced/overpowered to the silly level. I mean if it was FPS instead where you push right mouse button to unleash the same BFFS attack  that lets you kill everything easily and without need to aim etc, would it make things more appealing? Suspect it'd be the same snoozefest. But it's not fault of FPS conventions/mechanics in such case, but rather over-the-top weapon that removes the need to actually utilize most of available mechanics at all.

Jedi Outcast/Academy pulled off Jedi powers in an FPS (and 3rd person) fashion well. That, coupled with the good stuff in KotoR would have been pretty nifty.

Fuck a Shadowrun MMO.

Fuck it.  Fuck a Battletech "mmo" while we're at it also.

They need to start giving people who have the creativity and the balls to make their own world, own lore & their own fucking game not just WoW but with lazers!  I'm so sick of established IP mmo's...

Take some Shadowrun, some Sprawl, some Snow Crash, some SL player's better ideas, some Cowboy Bebop while your at it and some zany ideas of your own.  Make a game that works well, where the world is cool, gritty, dark and layered and viola.  I'll give you money.

Turn-based strategy can basically eat my ass, except when the conflict in question is on a scale too large for real-time to be feasible.  A strategic-level simulation of WW2 in the Pacific?  Make that turn-based.  Three Star Wars heroes fighting a dark Jedi and a squad of Stormtroopers?  Give me my fucking real-time pew pew.

Just got done playing the Witcher, the game is running on modified Aurora engine so i'm guessing it's turn-based under the hood but frankly i don't see how making it "real real time" instead would make the gameplay any different. It even has the third person mode that requires one to aim at stuff with the center of their screen rather than straight mouse clicks, if the extra cock-stabbing midget factor is really desired.

Turn-based isn't obsolete.  Taking a look at chess, you can see that the point of the turn-based mechanic is to give their players time to think and that becomes the game.  We could turn it into real-time chess, but then it's an entirely different game.

So I could see a turn-based RPG as succeeding.  The only trouble is, as far as an online space is concerned, it means all the other players wait around while you make your move.  You're forced to put in a time limit and, if the player lags past that, they lose their turn.  You're left wondering if turn-based strategy is worth the sacrifice.

It's how your average MMO works at the moment, with the certain turn size and forced auto-advance. Get the turn length close enough to zero and it's the fabled Real Time. When WA said fuck the tabletop rules i took it more like motion to discard the whole rpg tables-and-dices mechanics that determine if you actually manage to pull off the shit you are trying to pull off, rather than rage against the turn length... could be wrong, though.

If you're willing to go that far, I could say just about any game is a turn-based game under the understanding that CPU execute their instructions sequentially.  Personally, I draw the line between "Turn-based" and "Real-time" as whether or not players are given time to think before acting.

Looks like this move is almost equal to the original FASA getting their IP back from M$. And Jordan Weisman is on board. Check out wiki to find out who he is : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Weisman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Weisman)
Perhaps not an icon video games, but he's known to the gaming industry in general. He's the founder of FASA (makers of PnP RPG Shadowrun, miniatures game Battletech, and possibly one of the coolest tabletop gaming companies before they dissolved) and WizKids (that's right... Mage Knight. Collectible Miniature Crack.).

Sharon Turner Mulvihill, another big name for Shadowrun, is part of the company.

Might be promising.

I honestly had no idea that the founder of Wizkids, current holder of some of FA$A's best copyrights, was also the founder of FASA.

Pretty much, or from different angle you could say that lot of FPS games (of single player variety) can be easily seen/made turn-based simply because you can pause them at any time and ponder your next action till cows come home. In any case the point is moot, for MMO that is anything more than just chat room where you find other people to play instanced games that involve no more than few of them, you can expect the timeline to advance on its own at whatever rate they deem suitable.

Ok now my sarcasm filter for this board is totally off. Was that sarcastic?

Because when most developers are struggling to just make a good MMO on a gameplay level, I also want them to have to worry about creating new IP's.

New IPs offer freedom, but old IPs carry an established fanbase with them.  Of course, this in itself can prove to be an impediment in the long run.

Because purchasing IPs like The Matrix or Star Trek or Star Wars or D&D in no way hinders game development due to IP owner oversight, delay or reject certain gameplay features or build unrealisitic player expectation about what the experience should be like.

Buying an IP has its own risks and rewards. Developing a new IP has its own risks and rewards. Pick your poison.

What we are seeing here are projects being started because they have the IP recognition that draws nerd angel investment. I'm sure that all the Shadowrun players who loudly said "Wouldn't a Shadowrun MMO be really excellent awesome!" in threads about the Shadowrun FPS helped this cause.

Of course, I strongly suspect that 9/10th's of those who talked about Shadowrun in such notalgic terms never actually played the PnP game and are just thinking "elves + cyberpunk =  :awesome_for_real:". Oh, and they'd be in their late 20's at the youngest - that's when cyberpunk was last "cool".

Under the hood, CoH/V is actually a turn-based system that runs in real-time. Powers activate after 1) being cued and 2) reaching conditions that allow them to be activated. It's been tweaked so that enemy attacks that occur after their death can't kill you, but it's pretty close.

Just like Tabula Rasa?  :grin:

EDIT: I'm still waiting for SJG to announce GURPS Online. That's my PnP RPG of choice. Of course, it'd probably suck and the GURPS rules would need an online overhaul to stop them being exploited as badly as they can be...

Yeah, I'm sure HAM was all Lucas' suggestion.


And I'd suggest that you're completely wrong.

In my ponderings on an ideal Shadowrun MMO combat system I started to think of systems in the past that were quasi turn-based (i.e. almost slow enough to be truly turn-based).  Also started thinking of a gameworld that'd suit the genre perfectly.

Gentlemen, that game is The Matrix: Online.  Take that entire combat system and the world it's in and port it to Shadowrun.  Done.  End of story.   It'd be the smoothest MMO port ever done.  You wouldnt have to change much of anything aside from the skins and the lore.  Of course, I'm being a bit rash here and there are many things that'd have to be added and tweaked, but really... most of the stuff is already in place.

No sense in hashing out the details; those who know SR and have played MxO will feel me. 

When you say MxO online combat, do you mean the current iteration, or the version (if such a word could be used to describe it) that was there at the release of the game?

Wait a sec, you claim to be ambivalent about magic and elves and still you chose the name "Evildrider"?!?

Entirely my point.  The people currently getting the $$$ to make these things ARE NOT THE RIGHT PEOPLE.


Seriously though.  Perfect example?  Warhammer, there is no way anyone familiar with the lore will be happy.  Its just not possible, you are trying to port a non-video game world to a persistent MMO with all the limitations that come with that.  Stop fucking doing that already.

The way things ought to work:
Battletech MMO would = SolarisVII is the gameworld, that's it.  Arena combat of various levels (in mech, infantry squads etc), make lots of black market angles, some social minigames, betting on player fights, player run stables, start there because its something you could actually accomplish.

Shadowrun MMO would = one major city.  Seattle, Berlin, one of the one's they did a full sourcebook for.  Then fucking layer that badboy, create a diverse array of gameplay experiences.  Which is something nobody is capable of doing right now, except CCP, because they are awesome and had balls of steel, or were drunk, I can never tell with those people (Icelanders).  The whole space thing really helped them out too for a variety of reasons.

Most are not the right people to make ANY games, as far as I can tell. People like to chat things up about MMO's being the future, and how all of this is cutting edge and whatnot, but as far as I can tell, it's an industry that's almost completely incompetent to make a compelling game. To hell with them blaming it on budget, scale, time and publishers constraints, "wah! fun is a mystery" or whatever. I have a hard time believing that they could even make a good handheld game with all the cash and freedom in the world. Whether the licenses are ideal or not is only on my secondary list of concerns. Even a good designer can squeeze good things from a bad license.

There are a few flashes of actual game development going in MMO's though. Some were done by people with action/shooter experience (Planetside, JtL), console/action/adventure titles (Cryptic), boss battle scripting (folks at Blizzard), etc. Problem is, they don't get to call the shots on the overall design of these games. And usually, the overall design is actually working against what they're doing.

Everyone see this one by now (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16535)?

The combat version that was at release of the game, or fairly soon thereafter when it was patched up a bit.  What I liked about it was it gave you JUST enough time to think about what you wanted to do and even think ahead a bit (combos etc.).  I havent played MxO in a fairly long time so I'm not familiar with the current iteration.

Another thing I was thinking, if the above format isnt kosher... why not bring back the old-school truly "long-timered" turn-based systems ala Final Fantasy (I forget which versions) with group formations?  Any actions would use modern cinematic approaches once a turn was decided and perhaps have some twitch minigames (perhaps involving willpower, luck, and the like) in the middle of a sequence.  I've always thought that system was fun to play with but in a modern sense would be even more entertaining if done properly.

Id like to say a real-time FPS is the way to go, but too often Devs leave elements out for the sake of pure twitch combat.  If they can get it right then obviously a real-time system could work for SR, but it's a tough task.

Did you ever play MxO where you were fighting versus more then one person?  The system (which I liked in theory also) fell apart in a fucking hurry.  At least that's how it was before the beta broke on me.

It would happen vs NPC groups at least quite frequent, iirc they would take turns of sort so your selected tactic would be applied vs everyone attacking you one after the other. But yup it wasn't pretty. Then again, it at least looked damn better than the other games where you have both sides taking swings at air roughly in direction of the other guy and completely out of sync.

edit: thinking of it some more, MxO is about only MMO where the fight sequences stick in my mind still purely for their eyecandy factor. Overall guess i liked more about the system on the whole that i disliked.

I will say this much in favor of an MxO system: It, like Shadowrun, is based on a system of opposing rolls. 

That said, it does indeed have a major issue when you've got more than two participants.   I guess we could chalk that up as "things that'd have to be added and tweaked". 

NGE probably wasn't driven by SOE. A number of articles indicate that is wasn't easy for SOE and Lucasarts to work together on the project. Raph, feel free to make one of your "no comment" posts about this.


And I'd suggest that you're completely wrong.
[/quote]

Suggest away. Maybe you and everyone you knew played Shadowrun and it was the greatest game evah to your social set. It was still a third tier PnP RPG, running a long way behind D&D and White Wolf's outputs in terms of popularity and sales. For every Shadowrun fan who complained about the Shadowrun FPS, I'm sure that another 9 climbed on the combined "we hate Microsoft / we hate Vista for gaming / MS screws another IP" bandwagon while talking about how guns and elves would be cool to play online.

So I'm going to call the Snakes On A Plane effect here: just because the interwebs go nuts for the concept, doesn't mean people are going to show up.

I'd rather call it the Harold and Kumar effect. Fuck that movie. Snakes On a Plane was cool.

You know, there's is a middle ground between not having played it, and thinking it was the greatest game.  I think most people who ever got into P&P games (and you shouldn't be suprised that a bunch of people who hang out on video game/MMO focused message boards were into P&P RPGs at some point in their lives) have played at least a few sessions of the majority of well known P&P RPGs out there.  There were a lot of things I didn't like gameplay-wise about Shadowrun 2nd Ed. (the last version I actually played although I've read the 3rd and 4th Ed. rules), but I think it had a better developed world than most D&D settings, and it had more focus than Rifts.  The Shadowrun FPS, being an online-only competitive game, didn't play to that one major strength I think Shadowrun has.

I'm going to counter that with the DDO effect: just because something sells large numbers in the meatspace doesn't mean people are going to show up in same numbers when it hits the interwebs.

Now on the other hand, if you get the interwebs go nuts over the concept that will be accessible through that very interweb... you just might be onto something. Presumably as long as you avoid the NGE pitfall.

I think when you really sit and sift through the SR PnP game, you eventually come to realize that it was MEANT to be played as an online RPG and really not as a tabletop game.  Everything about SR and Cyberpunk in general screams to be put in an online universe.  Matter of fact, much of the technology we have today is owed to forward-thinking cyberpunk IPs like Shadowrun (including some facets of the net).

The #1 complaint with SR is that it's just too meaty and extremely difficult for a GM to fully have control over.  You almost have to have a cultist following of the game to really get it all and even once you do, as soon as your players grasp it they almost ALWAYS will want to do something you're not prepared for, because there's just too many different things to do.  That's why people NEVER recommend SR as an "entry-level" PnP game for GMs or players for that matter, unless you fully intend to put the time in.  This is why it almost screams to be handled in some kind of online format, because it's next to impossible to satiate your players in PnP format (it's too restrictive).

Another reason an SR-MMO would be good is simply because of the many layers already built into the game.  It's not just about Shadowrunning, so a player could conceivably try his hand at Corporate intrigue, politics, the myriad black markets, and on and on.  There's even a game within a game that can be played entirely on the wireless 'net', or even in the fuzzy space between life and death (the paranormal realm - i forget what it's called).  You can live your life on or off the grid...errr over or underneath it.

It really would take large amounts of people to flesh out the world entirely, even if you just compelled people to Shadowrun and/or be Corporate bigwigs.

Isn't Shadowrun basically just "Gibson + elves" right down to terms like "street samurai" and the like?

Yes, Ghambit's assertion is - and I think I'm being generous here - kinda odd.  The technologies and ideas he mentions were adapted and written about by authors like Gibson, Stephenson, Bear and others long before the RPGs nicked them, and Baudrillard was discussing virtual reality in 1983 (hell, the idea of an an artificial, self-contained, technologically-created "virtual reality" was witten about in the 18th century).

Until we discover that mankind (and of course dwarf-, orc- and troll-kind) have six points of essence which are eaten away by the addition of mechanical additions to the body, and which round down to the nearest integer for all scientific calculation, then the impact of the gaming IPs upon scientific and technological advances will have been minimal.

Did I ever "assert" (as you say) that SR is owed props for modern technology??  uhhh, no.  I said forward-thinking punk IPs LIKE SR. 
(ya know, I REALLY hate it when people quote me and spin it for sake of argument.. please dont do that)

Techno Sci-Fi in general has always been a catalyst for technology, regardless of who did what first.  If you want to get picky then of course, a PnP game like Cyberpunk2020 is more revolutionary than SR, obviously because it came first.

I always laugh when people say Tolkien and DnD created the fantasy genre.   Obviously Beowulf was the seed, Tolkien was the fertilizer.

Stop it with the assertions!  Beowulf was one of a long line of epic poetry!

The fertiliser joke was quite funny, though.

Well, we could always say Indian cave drawings were the seed of fantasy if we're gonna be THAT picky.  errrrr, maybe the invention of the wheel caused Gnomes to be born?  :grin:     Ur right though, Beowulf definitely wasnt the penultimate seed, but definitely a major player.

I think it is, however, safe to say that Tolkein created the elves, orcs, dwarves, and wizards paradigm that's dominated the fantasy genre.

Elves and dwarves were created by Germanic and Norse mythology.    Tolkien got the word "orc" from Beowulf (which is also Germanic) and the creature itself is derived from Slavic mythology.  Wizards of course existed in mythology long before Tolkien and can be traced to a myriad of locations, moreso Celtic Druids in Tolkiens case I think. 

wikipedia ftw!

p.s.
I guess everything cool DOES come from Scandinavia.  Maybe AoC wont be that bad.

He's not saying Tolkien invented the names, or even the shapes of the signified objects referred to by the signifiers.  He uses the word paradigm.  What Tolkien created was the way in which those words and ideas are now used.  The Ring Cycle, for instance, may have inspired Tolkien (as well as the myths upon which it was based, with which he, as a scholar of Norse and Anglo-Saxon languages and verse, was very well aware of), but the Belgariad or any of that toss would be very different if inspired by Das Ring Des Nibelungen instead of ripping off Tolkien.

Indeed, Tolkien was not the first fantasy author... but he did bring all the pieces together in a wonderful way, that's for sure.

So who is the originator of the Cyberpunk genre?  Wiki has its thoughts, but I'm not sure I agree with them (they're pretty vague as well).

So WOW is to MMOs as Tolkien is to Fantasy Books?

In honour of the scientology thread giong on in serious business I'd just like to say that I would love to see a Shadowrun MMO run the storyline with the scientology lookalike organisation, partly to see if they ended up getting dead-agented.  The booklet that came with that module was, I thought, some of the best writing in an RPG ever.  Genuinely threatening.  I think it was called the Universal Brotherhood.

Wasn't that a front for demon-insect-people-from-another-dimension?


I never played Shadowrun,  but the sourcebooks were a hoot to read.

It was, indeed, an insidious front organisation for insect spirits.

And, like you, I really liked reading the sourcebooks for their own sake: I tended to get the sourcebooks for a while even after the chances of actually playing were minimal.

The problem with PnP is always the actual playing of the game, I've only seen one campaign (it was CoC) go well for some time and even that eventually devolved once two characters were so low on sanity that it was only a matter of time.  Suddenly the slaughtering of "cultists" became quite indiscriminate and some PC's killed other PC's etc etc.

That doesn't sound like a problem, it sounds like fun!

Yep.  Sounds like low sanity.

I'd say it's more EQ1 to MMOs. EQ1 wasn't the first Tolkien-inspired fantasy-themed MMO. But it was the first to achieve "critical mass" of what was then understood to be the market. And it did so by popularizing/formalizing a number of things like 3D presentation and the whole DIKU system within.

What do you guys think Weisman (Smith and Tinker) will come up with now that he's got some shiny new toys?  (shadowrun, mechwarior, and crimson skies)
Gamespy seems to think he's going to go less "gamey" and more simulative (which I like).  Although Crimson Skies was a hit because of its arcade action, kinda like Unreal Tournament in the sky.

Crimson Skies was a great game.  I forgot all about it.  I should go play it later when I get home.