Due to a combined effect of a prolonged stomach virus encounter and a therapist's session on internet addiction, I've been away from the boards for a long time. I apologize for not alerting you, Ghostmaker, that I was on hiatus in the middle of a run, and I hope you were able to pave over my absence without hurting the run. I've done a lot of thinking about the game and what I like/dislike about it, and I've done a lot of writing. I've found that at the beginning, I was interested in squeezing every little drop of dice out of 400 BP. After multiple endeavors and character experiments, I got burnt out. The narrative started to seem so meaningless. I realized that what I truly loved was the environment, the characters, the general gritty atmosphere that Shadowrun offered that so excellently helped me escape my own drab suburban life. The bottom line is I love Shadowrun and disdain dice. Stepping away from the make-believe to shake a cup and yell "Yahtzee!" to shoot at some corp goons feels too real in such a paradoxically unreal way. Does that mean I'm going to abandon my current runs, and avoid other ones? I sure hope not. Rolling the dice is a sacrifice for me, but the great thing about PBP is that you have time to write down that extra narrative in your posts without pissing off your fellow players with your lengthy verbal prose.
However, I am interested in experimenting with some diceless games of SR. A focus on character, not ability, at least not in a munchkin way. It should be less "My character has a steady hand. She can shoot with 14 dice!" It should be more "My character was taught to shoot by her father so that she may one day be a human weapon against a corrupt tyrant." (like Hanna) While GMs can try to downplay the dice, the numbers will always be there. I would like to try a combination of hop-in gameplay with stable recurring characters, utilizing a simplified priority system to create a skeleton for the character for the GM's purpose, with dice only being used to generate an outcome for specific random encounters that can allow for branching paths and a "never quite the same" narrative. If anyone is interested in joining this endeavor, post some characters that you always wanted to play but never thought a GM would allow/let survive or offer to GM a diceless game. But remember: I want you to feel like Batman, but remember that Batman still lives in a sh--hole. There will be no excessive GM retribution for outlandish actions, but that does not mean that you should be an advantageous player that ruins the game for the rest of us. My rule for warnings has always been "One In (ICC), One Out (OCC), You're Out (PC Death)."
Have fun chummers.
