The situations that NES is talking about are exactly what I mean about an arbitrary retcon policy.  If retcons exist, but are disfavored, they are only going to be applied unfairly whenever someone with enough influence on staff dies, i.e. when four staff alts do something suicidal.  People need to get past this insensible aversion to retcons.  I picture it like the Old Guard of MUXes with their hands over their ears and their eyes closed yelling "retconning is bad, it breaks continuity, I can't see you I can't hear you lalalalala!"  Let's strap them down into one of those Clockwork Orange brainwashing chairs with their eyes forced open, reprogram those buggers.

In the entire time I have been on Seattle, I have seen only 3 retcons. The first created the policy that if a player were found to be engaged in OOC crossover that their character would be nuked period. Some time after that policy "expired", the third retcon transpired for less reason than the first. The second retcon (still after the nuke policy expiration) involved a pkill, a revenge pkill and was a mess.

Therefore retcons are frowned upon.

Reason number 247 why I just can't quite bring myself to hate too hard on houserules:

"Actually, there is no Raw limit to how many services a spirit can be charged with simultaneously. Allies should not have access to the "Spell Sustaining" service, because it's completely nonsensical.

And I do mean nonsensical. While it would be totally broken for them to be able to sustain all of your spells indefinitely, they actually can't use that service at all because they only count as being appropriate for all of your spell categories (or any of your spell categories) for Aid Study and Aid Sorcery. They technically can't sustain any spells for you.

Spell Sustaining and Spell Binding should not be on the list of available services. In fact, when I wrote the section it wasn't in the list of available options. It got put in as a typographical error during typesetting when a copy/paste got pulled from the wrong spirit section."
-FrankTrollMan

We're playing Shadowrun, not DumpshockRun.

I totally understand that, and think you guys can play it however you want to, but that doesn't mean I won't cringe a little everytime people involved in the game's development say "Well, yeah, we screwed up there, and actually, we know it's a screw up but we have a standing don't-clean-up-spilled-milk policy as well as contradictory FAQs posted now."

The thing about Trollman (and his followers) is that he interprets the rules in the worst, most craziest way possible in order to "prove" that they're broken.  And in this case, he said himself in that post that you can read the RAW as not allowing ally spirits to sustain spells, since "they actually can't use that service at all because they only count as being appropriate for all of your spell categories (or any of your spell categories) for Aid Study and Aid Sorcery."  

In order for the argument that an ally spirit can sustain all your spells in the first place though, you have to use an insane interpretation of RAW: that a spirit can use the same power an infinite number of times simultaneously.  The RAW actually does not say how many services a spirit can maintain at once, probably because it doesn't matter for ordinary spirits - using their powers uses up a service, so no matter how much you try and abuse your spirit, it will just poof away.  Ally spirits came along, and they did not consider that possibility.

But here is an important general rule of interpreting rules:  just because it doesn't say you can't, doesn't mean you can.  It doesn't say that you can't order a spirit, with one service, to simultaneously use confusion on 100 people.  But that doesn't mean you can do it.  Just the same, it doesn't say that an ally can sustain all of your spells at the same time, but that doesn't mean they can.  It's a perfectly legitimate interpretation of the RAW that allies can only sustain one spell for you at a time.  It's not the only interpretation.  But it is a VITAL and IMMUTABLE law of rules interpretation that when you have multiple possible inerpretations, you do NOT follow the one that is bat-shit insane and totally stupid.  You follow one of the other ones.  Period.  

That's why, for instance, even though you could read the rules as allowing you to chain up a billion billion agents into a swarm of armageddon, you shouldn't, because it's dumb.  Instead, you should read the rules as only allowing you to control as many agents as you can subscribe to, since even agents which run independently count against your subscription limit.  That's the interpretation which isn't bat-shit insane.  Trollman wants us to use the crazy version so that our game becomes unplayable, so he can write us a new game that we'll all play.  Which is understandable for a writer frustrated by typos and higher-ups overruling his decisions.  But it isn't the method we should follow when playing our own games.

It's true, however, that there's a fine line between non-insane interpretations of the rules and house rules.  I think if we made a post clarifying the RAW that allies can only sustain one spell (or, following Trollman's suggestion, that they don't count as appropriate for any category and can sustain no spells), it wouldn't be a house rule, because it's just patching up an ambiguity in the RAW.  A house rule is something that changes the RAW when it's already quite clear.  For instance, when stick-n-shok is available for all firearms and does 6S(e) damage, saying that stick-n-shok does 4s(e) or is only available for shotguns is a house rule.  It's something where a new player who knows the book rules would have to re-learn rules which are completely and arbitrarily different from the RAW.  But when we just let players know that we decline to interpret the RAW in a stupid manner, that isn't a house rule.  It might be a subtle distinction, but I think it's important.

Yeah, I think he overstates his cases fairly often, although nowhere near to the extent that Cain does with Edge (For example, the idea that someone can blow up a van/kill a driver with a handgun in ridiculous circumstances IF the GM lets them doesn't really hit me as "striking to the core of the flaws with SR4's main mechanic," especially since the damn target can just spend Edge right back to soak). It's just the constant "Well, so and so didn't really mean to write it that way and our current practices never seem to allow any clarifications to be made..." that I find disheartening. And as I've said before, I think it's a good thing to make rulings on the murkier stuff clearer than they're currently presented in the books. My personal belief is and remains that SR4 is more sound than it is often given credit for, but a lot of the craziest excesses are only stopped by what is seemingly minutiae and I find myself having to repeat things an awful lot. I can agree with the distinction between "making it clearer how shit works" and "houserule", I just hope the disdain for the latter doesn't hamper the former.

That's what you mean to say, because lets be honest, saying Dumpshock has it's own version of Shadowrun is like saying WORA is a cohesive tactical terror squad. Saying that we're (Which includes me) playing teh REAL Shadowrun is also one of those fallacy statements. Everybody has a different version.

On that same line of thought, FrankTrollman doesn't have 'followlers', he has people who agree with his logic and arguments.

See, this right here solves so many issues when followed.  Nobody is ever going to write a game system that answers everything.  And if they did, someone would simply read it with a different mental frame of reference, or different emphasis on words, and it could still be made nebulous.  House rules that insist on clarifying RAW where someone could argue a (usually beneficial) interpretation that is, to an impartial observer, really dumb are themselves really dumb.  This isn't WoW.  You can't wave the book at your GM's face and say 'There's no code stopping from me from doing this!  It's legal, because I can, and you'll just have to patch it next month!'  No GM, in TT or virtual space, is going to let you invoke your own little version of the Crash with a brazillion agents or have your Armor/Invis/Increase Elfbian Charisma spells all indefinitely sustained with no downside, and they don't have to set some sort of textbound precedent, because the idea that it was ever intended for those things to happen is ludicrous.  (By the way, this is the first time I've spelled ludicrous right without spellcheck in a long time.  There's a couple words that I always forget.  Ever forget?  Happened to me.)

This Trollman's zeal is admirable in a way, but somewhat misplaced.  No, we're not all going to be playing the same verbatim 'version' of SR, in our head anyway, but in the end, just like in TT, the GM's vision has a trump.  If Frank's GM can't shut a rulesgnome down when they try something absurd and hide behind 'they didn't say no!' then Frank needs to find a new group, not to quantify every possible extrapolation of the ruleset.  It's really that simple. 

The eventuality of House Rules will probably be brought about by something in SR mechanics that doesn't transfer well to the persistant nature of MU's.  They shouldn't be brought about by such obviously aberrant interpretations as have been brought up, since a simple 'nobody on their meds would think that's the way it works, chummer' keeps it from happening just the same.

By the way, this is why I've never been to Dumpshock.  It's precisely the same at any game forum, TT or video.  Lots of verbose people convinced the system is fatally broken. But it's okay, because WE'RE HERE TO SAVE YOU!  OURS IS THE TRUE PATH!  CONVERT NOW OR FALL FOREVER!

He has people who agree with his logic and arguments.  Agree is a synonym of conform.  Conform is a synonym for follow.  Ergo, followers.  She shoots, she scores!    (But seriously, who cares whether he has "followers" or not?  It's an irrelevant word choice).

@Nevermore - Dumpshock isn't all that bad.  Since they very recently updated the board code and brought it into the 21st century with the rest of us (and also merged the SR4 and SR3 forums together) it has been jumping.  Lots of vigorous discussion to be had.  And most of the people on there are just interested in playing the game.  When someone asks "how does recoil work?" you don't have a bunch of people telling them that recoil is stupid and they should house rule it. 

I think people on there are too quick to adopt a house rule, though.  The problem is they don't really require something to be concretely broken before they house rule it.  For instance, stick-n-shok.  The "problem" with those is that they're really good against spirits.  Except that's not a problem, unless, in your opinion, mundanes ought not have any ammo that's really effective against spirits.  It is not a concrete systemic problem, it's just a touchy feely "me no likey" problem.  Just like how Trollman hates agents.  In his opinion, they are much too good, and intrude too much into the hacker's job.  But that's not a quantiatively broken thing, it just doesn't accord with how Trollman thinks the game ought to work.  If you dig deep to find the basis for most house rules, they're either a "me no likey" justification, or they're based on realism.  And dumpshock people are, on the whole, too ready to embrace them without thinking it over, IMO.

But it's not a forum dedicated to rewriting the game, or finding how ordinary things are broken.  The people who think that the "hit" system is evil don't rewrite SR4's dice system.  They just keep playing SR3 and leave the rest of us alone.

Tear, I have seen enough people CITE page numbers, and be told that the rules are wrong, and that they are supposed to be some house Rule(as proven by them not being able to produce a page reference). Now, myself, I am using only three house rules in my game.

1: Essence loss in Chargen does not drop the magic/resonance you have paid for, it reduces your maximum(thus, if take 1 point of Essence loss in Chargen, you pay 25 BP for the Magic/Resonance 5, and 4 becomes your soft cap). That is a "me no likey", because it seems unfair.

2: I am allowing Technomancers to upload programs from their commlink into their living persona, bound by all the limits of the Commlink rules, while Complex Forms do not count againt the "commlink" program limits. This is because there seems to be a universal consensus that TM's are worthless as hackers because of how expensive complex forms are. This is really just allowing the Living persona to count as a Commlink, which COULD be argued as possible, anyway, since the TM needs a commlink to store things, and can access their commlink.

3: I reduced the Adept Power of Increased Reflexes by 1 Power Point, because, honestly, it did not make much sense when said adept could blow 160K and 1 magic, and have +2 Initiative passes. It is still pricey at 1 Power Point, 2 Power Point, 4 Power points, but it is not "Sheesh..it is just Wired Reflexes...but magic."

I don't think there's even that many houserulers on DS, honestly, and I can actually only think of one guy there who seems to really hate on SR4 all the time, and his opinion's fall firmly under the "Worst interpretation possible" umbrella (and frankly, everyone seems really, really sick of him lately). And no, I'm not talking about Frank-- Frank's an incorrigible tinkerer, but considering he's one of the former writers, expecting him to not have opinions on the way things could be done is like expecting a tailor not to wonder if something would look a little better were it hemmed, and the only part of the system I believe he really hates is the matrix rules.


Seriously, proof? Because I've never seen anything like that which wasn't related to referring people to the FAQ or eratta.

@Sakieh - Those are pretty decent houserules.  And what's good is that you recognize that you're using them out of pure personal preference.  You want the game to work differently, so you make it work differently.  You're not trying to "prove" that your house rules are "needed."  I actually think #1 makes a lot of sense, because cybered adepts are totally like "duh" under the RAW.  But #2, doesn't that make TMs a no-brainer, and hackers obsolete?  I guess hacking still costs less BP since you don't need to buy resonance and the various resonance skills.  But still.  TMs start to look very "duh" with that rule.  As for #3, I can't disagree.  Whenever I make a combat adept, I always blow 1 magic on synaptic accelerator 2.  It costs 32 points, plus 10 for the magic point I'm burning.  But instead of wasting almost all of my power points, I just lose 1.  It's worth it because increased reflexes is such a frickin bad deal.

There's actually only a couple of houserules that I use currently, most of which are related to skills:

1. I made a new skill group called Projectiles, which is Archery, Throwing, and "Exotic Ranged weapons" (stuff like the monowire bolas & supersquirt in one skill).

2. I turned the close combat skills into Armed Melee (bladed & blunt weapons in one group), Unarmed Combat (duh) and Exotic Weapons Melee (everything else in one skill) plus I put htem into one Close Combat group.

3. I turned firearms into "Side Arms" (Pistols, holdouts & machine pistols), "small arms" (Automatics & Longarms in one group minus machine pistols) and Heavy Weapons (Duh) plus I put them all into the Firearms group.

4. I made it so it takes two net hits to stage up stick 'n' shock damage up one DV rather than a single net hit and non-conductive armor modifications give a bonus equal to half their rating (a maximum of three bonus dice) to the test to remain standing. Tasers are unaffected because I'm arbitrary like that.

I'll concede that the category names are messy and in the case of exotic projectiles outright abitrary, but basically, the idea is that I had very few players bothering with the skill groups and exotics to begin with, even if they wanted to be the "weapon specialist" type. The way I see it, once you have the ability to kill someone at a general range category the need for other skills that do aproximately the same thing doesn't really give you any new role within the group anyway. Charging my players less for the freedom to take a sport rifle out hunting paracritters in the NAN rather than using pistols "Because that's all they know how to use..." makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside yet doesn't really change much of anything all that drastically. The only time it'd really be an issue is if I strip my characters of their weapons and they have to scavenge for whatever reason, since my houserules make it easier to know how to use practically everything, but I considered that a small disadvantage relative to the immersion benefit gained from people no longer trying to get by with automatics in all situations. Besides, it also neatly tied up the firearm skills into "Discreet," "Deadly but obvious" and "Seriously, how did you fit that into the backseat of the car?" categories. Anyway, this is my favorite kind of houserule because it doesn't even really try to argue that anything's broken; I just happen to like things better this way.

As for the stick 'n' shock, I just wanted to give just a pinch of a nerf: they still cut through armor like butter if you're opponent isn't wearing non-conductive and it's still nastiest holdout ammunition available bar none, but it's a pinch harder to knock out a guy in one simple action and a machine pistol this way.

See, THAT is the kind of thing you don't want on a MUX.  Where people read the book, figure out the rules, then show up online and go, "duh... what?"  It's not like it's a bad idea, it's just so many little changes that end up being just another pile of details to track on top of the book plus the errata that already exist.