Shadowrunning

So as some of you know, I enjoy playing different RPGs. One in particular is a game called Shadowrun, 4th Edition (SR4).

One of the things I love about SR4 is that no matter how bad-ass you are, there's a very real chance that you can get your ass handed to you by someone who's never held a gun before. That's because skills and abilities in Shadowrun aren't like in other games, such as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D).

In D&D, whether in 3.5 edition or the new 4th edition, you have a set number that reflects your level of competency in that skill. To use it, you roll a d20 (a twenty-sided die, for the nongamers out there) and add your skill rating to what you roll. After a point, this means you can literally 'autosucceed' on some actions, since if you need to get a 15 to perform it, and you have a 14 in the skill, you're going to make it even if you roll a 1.

That's not how things work in SR4. You will never touch a d20 in SR4. Instead, you have a whole pile of d6s. When you use a skill in SR4, you take a number of d6s make up your dice pool. This pool is determined by the skill you're using, your abilities, and any other modifiers that add or subtract to your dice pool. When you roll your dice, count up the number of 5s and 6s you roll. These are your successes. You compare these successes against the target threshold, or against the number of successes your opponent gets on their roll. It is possible for you to roll a whole handful of dice, and still come up empty against someone only rolling three dice.

Moreover, in SR4, you have 'glitches'. Like the Critical Failures of some older systems, a glitch means Bad Things(tm) are gonna happen. You get a glitch when half the dice you roll come up as 1s. It is possible to succeed in using the skill, but still glitch. So you might climb over the fence easy enough, but you get caught on the way down, and leave your pants behind. If you glitch, and get no successes, however, its called a Critical Glitch. This is when REALLY Bad Things(tm) happen. That grenade you were throwing at the bad guys? Yeah, the fuse was a bit shorter than it was supposed to be, so it went off in your hand.

Being good at a skill doesn't mean you can cakewalk through things. It simply means you're less likely to fail. SR4 is one of my favorite systems because it is so much fun to tempt the cruel whims of fate.