Dadaph om Shadowrun og PathfinderShadowrun vs Pathfinder, stories from a RPG noob
Enda en post om rollespilling, og som forrige gang er denne her på engelsk.The Shadowrun campaign went on and on after my last post on the subject. As we’re a RPG club, the campain was more about shorter stories over 1-3 weeks than a huge consistant plot. The GM could change around (I played with three different GMs) and each one had their different style.
I told the story about Spikeball and the Sasquatch, which quickly became what my character was known for. People never stopped telling me that bigfoots (feet?) were peaceful creatures, upon which I rightfully answered that he started the fight, I just finished it.
My second session was also pretty fun. The GM is a regular in the club, but it didn’t seem like he had GMed Shadowrun before. The mission was to sneak into the appartment of a scientist and steal a deck or something. Spikeball did the stealthy approach and got to sneak in through the air ducts, while the two other characters simply knocked on the door and got to bluff their way in, keeping the scientist busy while I accidently triggered the alarm and all hell broke lose.
It was a very fun session, but was cut a bit short because one player had to leave early, but we got in, got what we wanted, and got a reward, even some good karma because nobody died.
However, the sessions to follow, I didn’t really have too much fun with, and I got to see the weaker sides of Shadowrun’s system.
For one, it seems like it’s several layers of gameplay… combat, matrix, hacking, magic, and a lot of mumbo jumbo that didn’t make sense to me. I made my character into a stealthy guy with a sword, a few lower lvl social skills, but nothing more. Some sessions came to a halt for me simply because my character had nothing he could do in any situation. The other characters would hack or cheat their way into a prison complex we were supposed to infiltrate, but I had no way of sneaking past the alarms, and the one tunnel I found was blocked off.
I rarely got to use my sneaking for anything at all, and never got into any combat situations anymore, besides a dragon in the very last session, but that was a foe I couldn’t possibly take on my own, and our plan was to drive it into a trap and hacking a bridge anyway.
Not really sure if I can blame the game, the GMs or myself. I created a character that was easy to imagine as a newbie, having no grasps of how any of the consepts of hacking or magic would work in the world of Shadowrun or in a gameplay situation. If I’m to play Shadowrun again, I’ll probably make a way different character, but then I’m afraid to get locked out if there ever is a fight, because the game seems to be very much about giving one character a chance to shine at a time, and not much about having the group work in the same area, together.
Our GMs did a great job with some fun stories, and because we are a club, we never know which characters will show up for every session. Not knowing much (or anything) about GMing, I can imagine it being difficult for a GM in Shadowrun to prepare a good game if he doesn’t already know all the characters in it.
Maybe, I’m not sure I even know what I’m talking about, just my feeling.
Anyway, I had a chance to sacrifice Spikeball in a fight against the dragon, but I backed out. Just in case I want to use that character in some situation later. After all, I spent a week trying to figure out the character sheet and different rules of the game. Just throwing away my first character like that kinda felt like a waste. I scanned the sheet and I’m posting it here for the entire world (or the two readers I got) to see:
Yeah, I know he kinda looks like a mix of Barret and Silent Bob.
So, Shadowrun over, what’s next?
Pathfinder… oh, I kinda wanted to play D&D… what the hell is Pathfinder?
Turns out Pathfinder IS D&D… kinda, not, or it is? The backstory was explained, and to me, it seems like D&D at some point split into version 4, which everyone seems to hate, and Pathfinder, which is much like the third version of D&D, but with some new stuff and streamlining.
Been reading the rules for a few days, and I’m utterly shocked on how easy everything seems to be compared to Shadowrun. We operate with one D20 dice, not 38 D6… that alone is a good allegory for the rest.
The consepts are easy to grasp. We don’t have layers of gameplay operating on different levels. You can be a magic caster and still have that magic work in the same battlesystem as the guy swinging a sword… just stuff like that blows my mind at the moment, but I’m not sure if it should.
My first session of Pathfinder will probably be played tomorrow, and I’m pretty hyped. Created a character for the Summer Campaign we will be running. One of my favorite classes in fantasy worlds is the paladin, so I just had to make one in Pathfinder:
Filled out the sheet while reading the rules. Still a few things I need to ask the GM about, like which EXP system we’ll be using, and howhorses works with lightening my load (still not encumbered though).
It’s gonna be a short campaign, so the GM gave us 4000 gp each, and we get to start at level 3.
I think my calculations are correct, just need to go over it another time, and of course, play the game.
Might post shorter versions of the session on twitter, might post it here. Not sure. Just had to write this somewhere.