System Design

## Theorycrafting

Fair warning, this is the section where I rant about game design. You are about to step into a minefield of baseless strong opinions.

## Why?

Shadowrun is an amazing setting. I love the world that it creates, filled with high technology and magic, coursing with politics and corporate espionage. It's well-executed Cyberpunk with a fantasy twist.

Shadowrun as a system is a chore. It's a remnant of the days when tabletop games thrived on unnecessary complexity. Those familiar with AD&D's endless collections of tables will recognize my meaning. The fifth edition of Shadowrun has 15 skill groups and more than 50 individual skills, ranging from Nautical Mechanic to Decompiling. It has subsystems for magic, rigging, and decking, with sub-subsystems within those.

Some revel in the minutia; I feel exhausted just looking at it.

I created Running Blind because I wanted to be able to run a Shadowrun game without the Shadowrun system. The objective is to create a game that new and old players can enjoy, one that bridges the gap between prescriptive rule-based play (Pathfinder) and narrative story telling play (FATE).

## How?

### **Prescriptive vs. Narrative**

Let's start with the elephant in the room. **This is not FATE.** It steals a few of my favorite things from FATE, then leaves the rest on the cutting room floor. Running Blind is designed to be crunchier than FATE. It has HP, a very different combat system, and no aspects or invokes. Narrative powers have been curtailed (though not altogether abolished) in favor of mechanics.

Running Blind is not a rule-based system either though. You will not find a table for grappling. Players have room to do things outside of the prescribed ruleset. If they want to try to bind the wind spirit with their magical powers, they don't need a specific spell to do so. They will, however, need to roll Knowledge to come up with something within the realm of possibility.

There is no easy way to carve a middle path between the two game philosophies. I've done my best to build a system that should hopefully appeal to both groups, but it will be up to individual GM's to find their happy medium.

### **FATE Skills**

The wonderful thing about FATE-style skills is how broad they are. "I want to pickpocket the guard." Roll Stealth. "I want to sneak past the sentry." Roll Stealth. "I want to disguise myself as a gang member." Roll Stealth.

There's a case to be made against skills that are too broad. That's precisely why I didn't use the Fate Accelerated Approach system. But I think that a simple skill set with levels between +0 and +5 is a useful compromise. It's intuitive and leaves enough room for customization.

### **Strategic Combat**

As much as I love FATE's skill system, I don't care for its combat. Aspects and invokes aren't complex enough to satisfy my need for strategy. They also don't work well with tabletop groups used to crunch (often devolving into Attack-Defend-Attack as players wrack their minds for enough narrative fluff to justify their next move).

FATE is based around creatively telling a story about how you do the thing. It isn't concerned much with the pragmatics involved. I needed a system with some mechanical complexity in order to make each style of fighting feel different. What I came up with was a weapon-based system.

Each weapon is tied to a Skill (Finesse, Physique, Stealth, Will/Knowledge) and an effect (+1 when this is true, -1 when something else is true). This ensures that a Physique Street Samurai plays differently than a Finesse Street Samurai while making them both useful.

There's probably plenty of room for imbalance and min-maxing in the existing system, but I feel like it captured the intent well enough.

### **Health**

I went with a traditional HP approach for health instead of FATE's stress system, mainly because HP is easier for new players to pick up. Consequences were transformed into injuries, a less ambiguous penalty divorced from narrative elements (aspects, invokes).

Injuries are a difficult thing to get right, but they're also near-and-dear to my heart. The flat HP system where a character goes from full fighting capabilities to unconscious has always irked me. You get tired while you're fighting. You get hurt. Your performance suffers. I wanted a system that reflected that while still being simple to understand.

### **Reduced GM Workload**

Ah, my favorite quality in any system. Have you ever GM'd a Pathfinder game? Have you ever had to memorize the mechanics for 37 different classes (not including unchained or prestige), or look up the rules for grappling? Did you know there is a flowchart for calculating the effects of Barbarian Rage?

It's maddening.

I want a system where the rules make intuitive sense. It shouldn't require an algebra problem to determine whether or not Georg the Undaunted hits with his axe. Likewise, most enemies shouldn't be as complicated as characters. The GM should be able to whip up a perfectly respectable spider demon in five minutes.

### **Scalable Character Creation**

One area where I don't mind complexity is character creation. I think that many of us enjoy forging an interesting character from the limitations of a system. Sometimes it's more fun than playing the game itself. But it's also important to keep in mind the subset of players that don't want to spend an hour calibrating stats. The balance to strike then, is building a system where both kinds of players can find enjoyment.