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Games Entertainment

WoW Board Game, Shadowrun 4.0, and City of Heroes RPG 44

Posted by Zonk from the zappinin'-chummer? dept.
Among the many announcements made at the GAMA Trade show this week, one of the most exciting is the revelation that Shadowrun 4.0 is on the horizon, to be released at this year's Gen Con game fair. Other news includes a World of Warcraft board game, an "Ultimate" version of Rifts, the Production Schedule for Dungeons and Dragons for 2005, a City of Heroes Table-Top RPG, and a 10th Anniversary Settlers of Catan edition. From the Shadowrun Website: "The core mechanics are completely revised to be simpler and more streamlined for quicker, easier and more consistent play. Matrix 2.0! An all-new level of wireless "augmented reality" overlays the real world, unleashing hackers to be mobile digital wizards."
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WoW Board Game, Shadowrun 4.0, and City of Heroes RPG More

WoW Board Game, Shadowrun 4.0, and City of Heroes RPG

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  • unfortunately (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fo0eY ( 546716 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @02:27AM (#11951250)
    before playing the new WoW board game, you must wait in line for d10 * 10 minutes

    and beware! one wrong roll of the dice and you will be dropped from the game and must wait in line again

    hours, and hours, and hours of fun for all ages! =)

    • A picture is more valuable than a thousand words (Score:5, Informative)

      by MacroRex ( 548024 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @03:07AM (#11951338)
      And a comic [ctrlaltdel-online.com] is more valuable than a thousand jokes.
    • and you'll need to wait d10*d6 * days to be able to buy the game, despite you having everything needed for playing the game already and having trialed it know what it is about and given your credit card number to blizzard already as well.

    • Re:unfortunately (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And even then, it's still more fun than the FFXI boardgame.

      It comes with 20 sculpted blue crabs, which represent the monsters you'll be fighting.

      To start play, you need to roll 1d10.
      - On 10, you find a WHM who you can group with. (Healer)
      - On 9, you find either a BLM or RNG, your choice. (Damage dealer)
      - On 8, you find either a PLD or NIN, your choice. (Tank)
      - On 7, you find either a BRD or RDM, your choice. (Dispel/Refresh Bitch)
      - On 6 or 5, you find either a WAR, THF, DRK, MNK, SMN, or SAM, your choice.

  • Shadowrun (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zaddikim ( 647701 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @02:29AM (#11951254) Journal
    was the one gaming system I played the most of, including Palladium and D&D. Hell, I didn't even think it was still around. Time to break out my 'decker I guess!

  • wizards? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @02:32AM (#11951260) Homepage
    "An all-new level of wireless "augmented reality" overlays the real world, unleashing hackers to be mobile digital wizards."

    Right, cuz thats what made deckers so cool....they were just like D&D wizards. BZZZT! WRONG!

    Shadowrun == D&D. And its players like it because of that.

    • Indeed. I always preferred Cyberpunk myself. In an industry where the more dedicated roleplayers tend to buy LESS product than novices, aiming for the munchkin market is probably a wise idea...
    • Have you even played Shadowrun? It is nothing like D&D. There are no classes or levels and combat is much more deadly (just to name a few of the larger differences). If you want a new asshole try going to Dumpshock and making that "SR players enjoy it because it's like D&D" claim.
      • Have you even read my post? I was stating precisely what you said, that SR players play it because its not like D&D.

        • Do you understand what "Shadowrun == D&D" means? It's directly from your post. I think you meant "!=".
        • So were you trying to say that you think 4th edition is going to be like D&D?

          Or did you mean that the ad makes 4th edition sound like its going to be similar to D&D?

          I can't agree in either case. I also wouldn't think any worse of FanPro for trying to sell SR4 to the D&D crowd (in the ads of course, the game itself had better be pure SR). There is a huge D20-centric mentality in the RPG hobby that can make even well-established games like SR a hard sell (especially to the younger crowd who kn
  • Ctrl Alt Del [ctrlaltdel-online.com] on the WoW boardgame.

  • I can see the COH RPG now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @04:15AM (#11951543)
    - Everyone does nothing for 20 minutes while everyone picks the costume they like.

    - Hero1 shouts out across the table "LFG" (looking for group.

    - Hero1 proceeds to tell Hero2,3+4 they are on his team.

    - Hero3 tells him to get screwed as he doesn't accept blind invites.

    - Hero4 asks what are we doing? Hero1 replies "We are going to get loads of XP!", Hero2 replies "I don't know I am busy buying stuff".

    - Hero1 stands around doing nothing for 20 minutes except letting off his powers to show off the effects to the newer heros, meanwhile a woman is getting mugged 20 feet away from him.

    - Hero2 starts complaining why isn't he getting XP, hes been standing around for ages waiting for xp and his team shouldn't be so lazy.

    - Hero4 says screw this and goes off to another table to level up.
    • Woah.. there for a minute I thought this was a description of WoW... and then I thought it was EQ.
      But, it definitely wasn't DAoC. That would be along the lines of
      H1: Okay, let's all meet at the instance
      H2: Alright, OMW.
      H3: Wow, that's going to take me a while to run there.
      H2: Okay, I'm here. Let's go
      H1: Still waiting for H3
      H3: Still coming.
      H1&2: waiting for about 30 mins
      H3: Almost there... gaack
      H3: NM, just died
      H1&2: Okay, we're going to go in & try it
      H3: Running back
      H1&2: Gaacck
      H3: Okay,
    • Haha, such a good description of -any- MMORPG :)
  • Anyone else here find the new edition of Settlers of Catan a lot more exciting than a WoW board game? Mmm. Settlers.
    • Oh yes! The 3D version looks top! Seems also to includes the cities and knights edition. The little figure which is presumably the robber is very amusing...

  • Shadowrun (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @05:40AM (#11951768)
    Interesting that FanPro says they're revising Shadowrun to be "simpler and more streamlined for quicker, easier and more consistent play". My RPG group tried Shadowrun (at my suggestion/insistence, as I'd played it back in my teen years), and it lasted less than a year because the game system was too cumbersome. There were so many things to remember that we spent more time flipping through the rules than we did playing the game. Each additional subgame system (Matrix, vehicles, magic) had its own vastly different rules, to the point where we had real trouble remembering all those details, even with cheat sheets.

    • Re:Shadowrun (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Khamura ( 664892 )
      I am looking forward to the new edition as well. Considering that FanPro is doing it this time, I wouldn't be too surprised to see the old system overhauled completely. I think they already did this with Mechwarrior? But my sources may be off.
    • Anyone play the SNES Shadowrun game? Actually it was wicked good.. had the best conversation engine of probably any RPG i've played to date. Combat encounters were random but not on a different screen - a paradigm the FF series is only now adapting. Unfortunately it was a bit short.. it felt like there were a lot of stats and things built into the game that were unused.. too bad there never was a sequel. Also, too bad the battery in my cartridge of it died so I can't trust the save game to stay extant.
  • By the blasted 7, as cool as the 3D Catan looks (suddenly I see a use for my modeling talents), considering the base Catan set is still $40-$50, how much do you suppose that thing is going to retail for?

    Scary, and yet oh so tempting!

  • Ah, GAMA... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Xaroth ( 67516 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @09:58AM (#11953077) Homepage
    We didn't get to go personally this year, but our new game is nonetheless being demoed to distributors out there on our behalf. Next year we should be ready in time, though. Something about the game coming to print a mere two weeks prior to the show.

    What disturbs me a little bit, being a newly formed independent game design company, is the seemingly increasing reliance on (movie/video game/whatever) property licensing within the traditional game industry. Ever since Monopoly opened the doors to having a million licensors/licensees, it seems to me that there has been more and more rehashes of the exact same games, only with new window dressing.

    While I suppose that there is a logical fit with some of them (a Star Wars-themed Trivial Pursuit was a brilliant idea, as was the LotR Risk), others just plain don't make sense. A NASCAR-themed Monopoly? NASCAR, whatever you may think of it, is about speed and there is NOTHING fast-paced about Monopoly - neverminding the whole concept of renting spaces as a racecar.

    My point being that it makes it feel a little bit like the time will soon come when a game not created on an established license will have difficulty gaining a foothold in the market. I suppose that just means I have to get in quick on starting my own powerhouse games now so that later it can be ME that's licensing my properties to others. Moohahaha!

    </ramble>

  • It's nice they're going to upgrade the Matrix (Score:4, Informative)

    by Pinkoir ( 666130 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @11:43AM (#11954154)
    Matrix 2.0! An all-new level of wireless "augmented reality" overlays the real world, unleashing hackers to be mobile digital wizards.

    When I first played Shadowrun back in the early nineties the way they concieved the Matrix was consistent with all the SF around. A really big, fancy VR network. This new version will be a nice change since the adoption of ubiquitous wireless functionality in everything under the sun really will turn Deckers into Real-Time digital mages (as opposed to the nasty game mechanics you used to have where the Decker player basically had to show up 4 hours before everybody else to get all his solo matrix shit out of the way).

    For a Sci-Fi look at how it would be read the Man-Machine Interface graphic novel by Masamune Shirow. It's almost enough to make me want to play SR again.

    -Pinkoir
    • It sounds a bit like they took a page from CyberGeneration, the followup to Cyberpunk published in the mid-90's. Basically they handled it by stating that most areas were on a WiFi-esque extension of the Internet that caused programs and data to manifest as three-dimensional images in the real world. Pity they couldn't come up with a better name for it than "Virtuality".
    • Right. Between the Decker drooling on himself in the matrix, and the magically-active drooling himself in astral, part of the run was more baby-sitting than actually doing anything. =)
    • For a Sci-Fi look at how it would be read the Man-Machine Interface graphic novel by Masamune Shirow. It's almost enough to make me want to play SR again.

      Probably more accessible to folks is the TV series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex which also features a future where lots of people are cyberized in some way, and many of those people can wirelessly access the Net directly with their brains. It airs on the weekends on Cartoon Network, though they're already up to episode 19 or so.

      I played Sha

  • I'll believe a Shadowrun improvement when I see it (Score:5, Informative)

    by analog_line ( 465182 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @03:43PM (#11957385)
    Let me qualify the subject line with the fact that I'm a great fan of the Shadowrun universe. I'm hoping and praying that Microsoft gets off it's rear and lets someone produce a Shadowun MMORPG, because it would certainly have my gaming dollars.

    That said, the Shadowrun 3rd edition rules are the most convoluted and obscure RPG rules I've ever had to work with. That's not to say that they're worse than earlier versions of the Shadowrun rules. The first and second editions are even worse, and can be broken in so many ways (as a bored game store owner friend of mine went into hideous detail about one night). However, unless you know the relevant rulebooks inside and out, you are going to have a devil of a time finding the relevant rules. FASA has a horrible reputation for piss poor editing in its books. In some of the older FASA releases, page references are wildly wrong, or completely nonexistant (one popular and hard to find book has all page references as "Page: xx") or even mentioning rules that just plain don't exist.

    I ran a Shadowrun campaign for, I believe about a year, approximately a year ago. Page references were just wrong on more than one occasion. Rule sections were unclear. Whole categories of (at least in my game) often happening situations were completely untouched upon, or mentioned only in passing. I'm not averse to house rules, but i like to at least try to see what the game system's rule for a situation is, and see if it made sense. There were so many normal types of situations that even the advanced rulebooks (like Matrix, etc) didn't even mention. I had to develop house rules for all kinds of normal situations. My play group spent hours flipping through sourcebooks trying to find something, ANYTHING that made sense.

    I wish the FanPro people well on this. I'll probably pick up the 4th edition rules to support people making stuff for the Shadowrun universe, but any further purchases, and whether I bother running a Shadowrun campaign ever again I've got a lot of doubt about.

    • Re:I'll believe a Shadowrun improvement when I see (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I for one do not believe in the creation of simplified rules for any RPG by Fanpro. DSA, which is quite important in Germany and belongs also to Fanpro is horrible complicated in the forth Edition. And when I take a look at the Shadowrun Homepage, I see the "Errata" Button rising its ugly head (which is the toombstone of modern roleplaying in my opinion.)
    • Whole categories of (at least in my game) often happening situations were completely untouched upon, or mentioned only in passing.

      Mod parent up! This is exactly what we ran into when we played, and it drove us to extreme madness, especially after having been coddled by the extremely polished 3rd edition D&D before we picked up Shadowrun. Of course, WotC decided 3.0 D&D wasn't good enough, so they released a 3.5 that really does seem to address a lot of issues with 3.0 - our group has found ourse
    • Replying to this so late that no one is likely to read it...none-the-less, I completely agree about a Shadowrun MMORPG. I'd be there. I've never been a player in SR, but I ran a campaign for years with first, then second and briefly third edition rules. Some things were so convoluted it was easier to come up with streamlined house rules to keep the gaming flowing at a nice pace. I hope 4th. edition rules are less cumbersome. I might go seeking players for a new campaign then.

  • Holy Crap... Settlers Pictures (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sbszine ( 633428 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:46PM (#11959725) Journal
    Check out the pictures of the new Settlers [gamingreport.com] game... the hexes are fully painted sculpted 3D pieces the size of your hand!

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