4th edition Shadowrun

So now that I've had a while to play it and mess with the rules, not to mention being neck deep in running a very convoluted campaign, I find myself fairly satisfied with the new changes. They've kept the right technological and magical mix. They've delivered the flavor and feel of the sprawling metropolises very well, but yet it feels lacking somehow.

As I sat here pondering it all came to me in a rush. One of my favorite parts of Shadowrun was the dice pool. You know, the extra dice that your character had that could be applied to anything and could only be replenished when the GM said so. (sometimes at the end of an adventure, sometimes when you did something heroic, sometimes for telling a raunchy joke or smashing a beer can with a katana you had laying around your apartment.) This was replaced by the "Edge" stat in the new edition. And several of my friends have told me that I'm just whining, that burning an Edge temporarily gives you the ability to re-roll your dice and therefore have a chance at a better result.

However, it's just not the same to me. Sure, re-rolling all your dice is useful, but there's nothing quite like taking a huge handful of dice, pumped up by your pool, and throwing 30-40 dice down all at once. Putting everything you have behind that one magical sniper shot, or that leap to clear an oncoming semi, or landing the perfect katana blow that separates two vertebra from some creeps back.

Also, Edge gives an easy way out. "I'm permanently burning an edge so I don't die!" It feels like the system has been neutered, giving players a get out of jail free card if they fuck up or say....a grenade goes off 2 feet away. It has taken out a lot of the lethality that made Shadowrun what it is. I fell in love with the game originally just because of that aspect. It wasn't like D&D where if you got hit by a lightning bolt you kinda shrugged it off and kept going. No, you get hit by a lightning bolt, you're gonna be either A)Dead or B)Wishing you were fucking dead. It lost some of its charm when it gave players a free mulligan against stupidity.

That being said, don't get the wrong idea. Shadowrun is still my favorite system. 4th edition cleaned up a lot of rules, and made it much simpler for new players to get into. No more arbitrary target numbers or "rule of six". I think the designers, for the most part, did a great job.

I fondly remember the bucket of d6's, maybe it's time for some house rules.