Favorite Turn-based Video Games Based on D&D or other TTRPGs?

[TaiLiu]

Just a fan at this point.

One of these days I'm going to put together a portrait pack to go with the mod's support for custom character portraits

(If I can ever find the full instructiona again that is; I tested it out a couple years back for my pwn game with stock art and it worked but in the intervening years the full instructions seem to have vanished from the site (or possibly I've overlooked something obvious when I was trying to look them up, it wouldn't be the first time))

Oh, cool.

[Bohandas]

This is unsuitable for the OP's purposes, but a while back (like a WHILE back) someone on Newgrounds posted a flash game based on the RPG Toon by SJGames, and that was pretty fun

[TaiLiu]

I recently started playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I began with a Druid, realized that the game didn't support what I wanted from it, and switched to a Kineticist.

The game explains very few of the mechanics, and a lot of it seems awkward or odd unless you're already familiar with D&D 3.5e or Pathfinder 1e. Luckily, I half-recall enough of PF 1e's rules for the game to make sense to me. But I wonder how much players who've never played the tabletop version understand.

One of these days I'm going to put together a portrait pack to go with the mod's support for custom character portraits

Until I started playing Pathfinder: WOTR, I wasn't sure what this meant. Apparently a character is represented by both a static picture and a movable avatar, which can look very different from one another.

This is unsuitable for the OP's purposes, but a while back (like a WHILE back) someone on Newgrounds posted a flash game based on the RPG Toon by SJGames, and that was pretty fun

That seems really cool. I wonder if it's a Flash game that's been successfully preserved. Do you remember the name?

[T.G. Oskar]

Strange that no one has mentioned Shadowrun Trilogy (i.e. Shadowrun Returns, plus its Dragonfall and Hong Kong campaigns). It's turn based and uses a very simplified version of the Shadowrun rules - it's only tangentially point-based, compared to the original system which ranges from point-based to priority based. From what I've heard, the combat system is very similar to the XCOM, specifically in how it treats cover and the concept of Overwatch (akin to 3.5's, 5e's or PF's Attacks of Opportunity, but on a zone).

The default setting (Dead Man's Hand) is very bare-bones, good to let you familiarize with the setting and the rules, though the stakes spike at the very end. It's a lot like the NWN original campaign, specifically in that the other campaigns are considered far, far better. Dragonfall, which is set on the Flux State of 2050's Germany, is considered the quintessential expansion - it adds a lot of new content to all archetypes, a set team which you can relate to, and a much deeper story which, as is Shadowrun tradition, raises the stakes right at the end. When the expansion was sold on its own, it got additional content (about three new missions) and multiple endings. Hong Kong rebalances the game by altering a LOT of the character development, and while the story has cutscenes for the first time, it can be quite chaotic; you have more control over your team, though the stakes aren't as personal as those in Dragonfall. Hong Kong also has the distinction of having an extra mission (that being Shadows of Hong Kong) which resolves some of the leftover issues from the third campaign while respecting the decisions made at the end of it.

True to Shadowrun lore, it's set in an alternate future where Magic returns to Earth and turns the world around: the US is divided as the northern states fuse with eastern Canada, a good deal of Native Americans reclaim their native soil, the Confederates retake the south and the Elves (yes, the Elves) form their own nation (and also retake Ireland). Dragons are power players (one campaigns to become president, the other owns a megacorporation), and corporations rule as kingdoms of their own, with their possessions acting as dominions independent of government. And, as you can expect from the cyberpunk aesthetic, it's a terrible world where you're either a corpo slave, born in the right place, or screwed up - and you're basically playing a combination of criminal and revolutionary, selling your skills to the right people to do missions from where you're not expected to be alive. (And sometimes, that involves becoming an actual hero.)

A key concept that the games replicate for the most part is the existence of the Matrix (which predates the movies), which is essentially Internet 2.0 (and very blatantly taken from Gibson's Neuroamncer). In all three games, if your MC (or one of your teammates) happens to have a cyberdeck and skills in hacking, you can physically enter the Matrix and interact with it. The OC has its Matrix sections almost always separate from combat, but come Dragonfall (and specifically in Hong Kong), you can have your decker character take turns in the Matrix while the rest of the party takes turns in the real world. (And the actions in the Matrix can have effects on the real world, including and not limited to opening doors, triggering traps and hazards, and finding data that you can sell.)

It's also a game where gear is as important, if not more, than the build. Partly it's because of cyberware, partly because there's virtually no magic items in the game (Hong Kong breaks the mold), and partly because the amount of money you get is pretty tight - as is Karma (the equivalent of XP), because it's gained through completing missions, not necessarily killing enemies. And while there's Magic in the game, it's neither weak nor as broken as in other games - it's a tool, like the 'ware you install in, the drones you can control, the full-auto rifle you unload on a single enemy, the sword/axe/katana you equip the character, amongst others.

By now, you might've realized I really love these games (finished all on PC; waiting for the physical copy on the Switch to replay them again). PC also has great mods and campaigns. I recall playing like three of them; Antumbra Saga can be brutally hard but has a very unique storyline, A Stitch in Time is one of my all-time faves; can't remember the third one but it's based on a module from the 1st or 2nd Edition of the TTRPG. The Editor is pretty robust and quite simple to learn: I tried to do a mod but got too distracted and a lot of things broke, but I had the opening scene, the first recruitment scene and the first mission mostly done, and that was on a laptop.

If anything, the game's pretty old (ten years as of now for the first release; Dragonfall was released about six months later, and Hong Kong in 2015), and even by that time it wasn't graphically intensive - all graphics are isometric, though hand-painted, rather than full 3D as would be the norm for the time. It has extremely good music, and its developer (Harebrained Schemes, the same people that eventually also brought Battletech) is comprised of one-half of the TTRPG's developers (Jordan Weissman), which ensured the game felt true to the setting (though it could've added a few randomly-generated milk runs like the Genesis version to really nail it). It's hard to admire these games after seeing what CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk (despite the debacle at its start), and I'd really love to see an updated version that takes some of the best traits of games like Baldur's Gate III, Dragon Age, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect with the story concept of games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. But, as it stands, these games do just fine.

[Bohandas]

That seems really cool. I wonder if it's a Flash game that's been successfully preserved. Do you remember the name?

Newgrounds uses a built-in emulator so it's fine:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/117212

The game's pretty short and a little rough - it's basically a proof-of-concept demo, but the author never got around to making a full version - but I remember it being charming

[TaiLiu]

Strange that no one has mentioned Shadowrun Trilogy (i.e. Shadowrun Returns, plus its Dragonfall and Hong Kong campaigns). It's turn based and uses a very simplified version of the Shadowrun rules - it's only tangentially point-based, compared to the original system which ranges from point-based to priority based. From what I've heard, the combat system is very similar to the XCOM, specifically in how it treats cover and the concept of Overwatch (akin to 3.5's, 5e's or PF's Attacks of Opportunity, but on a zone).

The default setting (Dead Man's Hand) is very bare-bones, good to let you familiarize with the setting and the rules, though the stakes spike at the very end. It's a lot like the NWN original campaign, specifically in that the other campaigns are considered far, far better. Dragonfall, which is set on the Flux State of 2050's Germany, is considered the quintessential expansion - it adds a lot of new content to all archetypes, a set team which you can relate to, and a much deeper story which, as is Shadowrun tradition, raises the stakes right at the end. When the expansion was sold on its own, it got additional content (about three new missions) and multiple endings. Hong Kong rebalances the game by altering a LOT of the character development, and while the story has cutscenes for the first time, it can be quite chaotic; you have more control over your team, though the stakes aren't as personal as those in Dragonfall. Hong Kong also has the distinction of having an extra mission (that being Shadows of Hong Kong) which resolves some of the leftover issues from the third campaign while respecting the decisions made at the end of it.

True to Shadowrun lore, it's set in an alternate future where Magic returns to Earth and turns the world around: the US is divided as the northern states fuse with eastern Canada, a good deal of Native Americans reclaim their native soil, the Confederates retake the south and the Elves (yes, the Elves) form their own nation (and also retake Ireland). Dragons are power players (one campaigns to become president, the other owns a megacorporation), and corporations rule as kingdoms of their own, with their possessions acting as dominions independent of government. And, as you can expect from the cyberpunk aesthetic, it's a terrible world where you're either a corpo slave, born in the right place, or screwed up - and you're basically playing a combination of criminal and revolutionary, selling your skills to the right people to do missions from where you're not expected to be alive. (And sometimes, that involves becoming an actual hero.)

A key concept that the games replicate for the most part is the existence of the Matrix (which predates the movies), which is essentially Internet 2.0 (and very blatantly taken from Gibson's Neuroamncer). In all three games, if your MC (or one of your teammates) happens to have a cyberdeck and skills in hacking, you can physically enter the Matrix and interact with it. The OC has its Matrix sections almost always separate from combat, but come Dragonfall (and specifically in Hong Kong), you can have your decker character take turns in the Matrix while the rest of the party takes turns in the real world. (And the actions in the Matrix can have effects on the real world, including and not limited to opening doors, triggering traps and hazards, and finding data that you can sell.)

It's also a game where gear is as important, if not more, than the build. Partly it's because of cyberware, partly because there's virtually no magic items in the game (Hong Kong breaks the mold), and partly because the amount of money you get is pretty tight - as is Karma (the equivalent of XP), because it's gained through completing missions, not necessarily killing enemies. And while there's Magic in the game, it's neither weak nor as broken as in other games - it's a tool, like the 'ware you install in, the drones you can control, the full-auto rifle you unload on a single enemy, the sword/axe/katana you equip the character, amongst others.

By now, you might've realized I really love these games (finished all on PC; waiting for the physical copy on the Switch to replay them again). PC also has great mods and campaigns. I recall playing like three of them; Antumbra Saga can be brutally hard but has a very unique storyline, A Stitch in Time is one of my all-time faves; can't remember the third one but it's based on a module from the 1st or 2nd Edition of the TTRPG. The Editor is pretty robust and quite simple to learn: I tried to do a mod but got too distracted and a lot of things broke, but I had the opening scene, the first recruitment scene and the first mission mostly done, and that was on a laptop.

If anything, the game's pretty old (ten years as of now for the first release; Dragonfall was released about six months later, and Hong Kong in 2015), and even by that time it wasn't graphically intensive - all graphics are isometric, though hand-painted, rather than full 3D as would be the norm for the time. It has extremely good music, and its developer (Harebrained Schemes, the same people that eventually also brought Battletech) is comprised of one-half of the TTRPG's developers (Jordan Weissman), which ensured the game felt true to the setting (though it could've added a few randomly-generated milk runs like the Genesis version to really nail it). It's hard to admire these games after seeing what CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk (despite the debacle at its start), and I'd really love to see an updated version that takes some of the best traits of games like Baldur's Gate III, Dragon Age, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect with the story concept of games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. But, as it stands, these games do just fine.

Oo! I actually have Shadowrun Returns! I got it for free somewhere. How understandable is the game if you've never played Shadowrun before?

Newgrounds uses a built-in emulator so it's fine:

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/117212

The game's pretty short and a little rough - it's basically a proof-of-concept demo, but the author never got around to making a full version - but I remember it being charming

I got into a fight with a dog. The UI isn't very good, but it's a good effort for sure. It might be more fun if I knew the rules of Toon.

"You're mistaken, my police training keeps me from developing any pleasant character traits" is especially funny.

[Erloas]

Oo! I actually have Shadowrun Returns! I got it for free somewhere. How understandable is the game if you've never played Shadowrun before?

I had at most a cursory knowledge of the setting before I played Shadowrun and I thought they were all great. Nothing in the combat system was that obtuse and was easy enough to pick up without knowing the setting. The stories do pretty good job of standing on their own. The engine and combat got a fair amount of polish by the time the second one came out, but Returns was still good.

[T.G. Oskar]

Oo! I actually have Shadowrun Returns! I got it for free somewhere. How understandable is the game if you've never played Shadowrun before?

All campaigns do their best to detail their settings (Seattle for Dead Man's Switch, Berlin as an anarchist state for Dragonfall and obviously HK for Hong Kong) and they explain the lore pretty well.

The system itself is pretty simplified. You get stats much like in D&D (Strength, Quickness, Stamina, Logic, Willpower and Charisma), and each skill governs certain skills - Unarmed and Melee Combat for STR, Pistols/SMG/Rifles/Throwing for QUI, Medicine, Decking and Rigging for INT, Sorcery and Chi Casting for WIL and Shamanism and Summoning for CHA. (STA had nothing until Hong Kong, where it gained Cyberware Affinity). Each score has a range from 1 to 10, though the actual maximum is determined by the race: Humans are balanced, Elves are quicker but have poor stamina, Dwarves have decent stamina and Willpower but poor Charisma; Orks have a lot of Strength and Stamina but little Logic, and Trolls take Orks to the extreme. You can't get more points in a skill than your stat: therefore, you can't have more Melee Combat or Unarmed than your base Strength.

Stats are pretty easy to explain: they govern half of the success on things you can do. As you level up those stats, you gain certain things: more weapon slots if you have high STR/QUI, access to more programs if you have high INT, access to more spells with WIL and CHA - extremely important - access to one Etiquette per 2 points of Charisma. This last one is mostly for roleplaying, and it represents how you behave around certain people, which usually means you open up certain dialogue choices that can stop battles or earn you rewards.

Skills govern the other half of success in things you can do, but act as specialties - Unarmed defines how good you are fighting unarmed or with loaded gloves, Melee Combat defines your skill with weapons, Pistols/SMG/Rifles are self-explanatory, Throwing includes both throwing weapons and grenades, and so on. As you level up your skills, you gain special perks with it, such as special actions you can execute - some weapons require you have a specific rank on a skill to use them, also. Spells are divided into two types - Mage spells (Sorcery, using Willpower) and Shaman spells (Conjuration, which use Charisma). In this case, think only slightly in D&D: Mages cast a ton of useful attack spells, debuffs and healing, while Shamans get most buffing/debuffing spells and barriers. Summoning is treated differently.

The way you level up your stats and skills is based on Karma, which acts like XP but added directly. You need to spend a number of Karma points equal to the rank of the stat/skill +1 (therefore, to raise Strength from 4 to 5, you need to spend 5 Karma).

The good thing about SR is that you get archetypes at the start, which auto-fill your stats and skills to however suits your need and give you related starting equipment. This includes Street Samurai (think Fighter but loaded with cyberware that enhances them), Decker (a hacker), Rigger (mechanic, uses drones in combat), Mage (self-explanatory), Shaman (self-explanatory) and Adept (think Monk that self-buffs with magic-based powers). You can develop each character to your liking, but it's recommended to specialize in only one or two things; Sammies should go full Strength and physical combat or full Quickness and go ranged, but not both - and preferably, focus on one weapon only. Deckers could dabble into Rigging but should also specialize. Adepts can learn some Sorcery to cast some spells but will suffer since they also need good Strength to make use of their Adept Powers. Shamans can choose Conjuration and Summoning but that means they'll have their other skills spread thin. As long as you don't try to make a jack of all trades, you should do fine.

Combats in SR are turn-based, but use cover and line of sight rules extensively. You fortunately get the necessary info regarding whether you'll be able to hit or not, the potential damage you can do, and the effects of the cover they're in. You get AP, which is the number of actions you can do, which can be divided into moving or attacking; as you progress in the campaign(s), you get more AP. (Note that spells like Haste and some cyberware/bioware/drugs can boost your AP by 1 or 2. Summoning or jacking into a Drone reduces your AP but grants the Spirit/Drone the ability to act on its own.) The game helps you with in-game tutorials, so you shouldn't get too lost while playing it.

As things go, SR is much easier to understand than games like BG or NWN, and you don't need to understand the TTRPG before playing it, since the stats and skills tell you what you get when you progress. The devs take some liberties in how the stats and skills are interpreted, though, as MANY skills are missing (Melee Combat collapses most of the combat skills; skills such as Shadowing, Hiding, Acrobatics and such are missing from Quickness, a lot of skills are missing from Logic; Etiquette is supposed to be a Charisma skill, not a trait from Charisma) or entirely replaced (Sorcery and Conjuration aren't WIL or CHA skills, but based of a separate Magic stat which starts at 1 and maxes at 6).

One last thing to mention is Essence. You get 6 Essence, and you lose Essence when you put on cyberware/bioware. In the TTRPG, if your Essence goes down to 0, you die (your soul separates from your body, basically). Game-wise, you can't get lower than 1, but it restricts the amount of 'ware you can equip. Furthermore, Essence influences your Magic - the lower your Essence, the harder it is for you to use Magic because you get less spells you can prepare and recovering from their use is much harder. Also, you don't get MP or specific spell slots - you can use Magic effectively at-will, but using the same spell too quickly incurs Drain, which is HP loss. Because recovery in this game is restrained (the Heal spell only recovers your last wound, and you can only really recover using Medkits), this means you don't want to drain yourself too hard. Fortunately, most spells have a quick recovery time of 1 or 2 turns, which means that Mages never really are out of spells. (However, with less Essentia, it takes longer to recover from casting a spell.) So, in short: don't add cyberware if you use magic of any kind (and this includes Adepts).

[Eldan]

I mean, Shadowrun lore isn't that hard to explain. At least hte basics. In 2012, magic came back, people turned into elves and orcs and so on. It also turns out dragons were real and they are enormously powerful. Now it's the cyberpunk future, but the megacorps also use magic and some of them are ruled by dragons. Because it's cyberpunk, a lot of our present-day countries fell apart and there's a lot of megacities.

That's mostly it.

[T.G. Oskar]

I mean, Shadowrun lore isn't that hard to explain. At least hte basics. In 2012, magic came back, people turned into elves and orcs and so on. It also turns out dragons were real and they are enormously powerful. Now it's the cyberpunk future, but the megacorps also use magic and some of them are ruled by dragons. Because it's cyberpunk, a lot of our present-day countries fell apart and there's a lot of megacities.

That's mostly it.

It's a great simplification, since it encompasses a good deal of the stuff happening in the world, but it misses a lot of things:

• For starters, the concept of the Sixth World. Yes, Magic came back - because it's like a tide. Magic always existed, but - like dragons - was on a dormant state. This has happened many times before, and it happens to be related to the bak'tun concept of the Maya. This is important, because Shadowrun is related to a more traditional (but no longer published) TTRPG called Earthdawn, which details what happened in the Fourth World. (For comparison, the Fifth World is mostly everything from early human history.)
• Yes, people turned into Elves and Dwarves, and Orks and Trolls. The first two were cool so they got a pass, but Orks and Trolls are ostracized by literal racism (*wink wink nudge nudge*) And that's not all - many animals also turned into paranormal critters. Basilisks? Tamed as guard dogs. Hellhounds? Same. If it's mythological, you bet it exists.
• As a corollary: HMHVV. You know Vampires and Wendigos and Ghouls? They're caused by the same virus, but with different mutations. And they're effectively immortal, so you got your undead too. Furthermore, Halley's Comet made antrhropomorphic creatures real, also.
• Talking about dragons - there's a distinction. There's drakes, there's dragons, and then there's Great Dragons. And Great Dragons do what they want, are often at odds with each other, and generally treat humans as either pawns or tools. (Hence, the great Shadowrunner adage, "never make a deal with a dragon".)
• Megacorps... It's important to remember that Shadowrun follows good ol' cyberpunk tropes, and these involve megacorps. This is also based on 80s cyberpunk, which held the idea that Japan would rule the world. There's A-rank Megacorps (think something like Toyota), AA-rank Megacorps (corpos with extraterritoriality, i.e. they're like their own countries with citizenship and stuff; think big fused corpos like Procter & Gamble), and AAA-rank Megacorps (few and far in-between, effectively control everything in the world; think Microsoft, Ford, Colgate-Palmolive, Raytheon, Boeing, SpaceX, the holding brand to KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut and three other huge brands being owned by a single company, and that's still not the reach of a AAA). Speaking of AAA-corps: they own the World Bank, they got kill sats, they sometimes own countries (Aztlán, the successor to Mexico, is owned by Aztechnology), and are shady as heck. And yeah, some of them (specifically Saeder-Krupp) is owned by a Great Dragon.
• The Matrix. (Just as a reminder: Gibson predated the Matrix, and the movie itself uses many concepts.) It's not just the new Internet - it's a world unto itself, it's ubiquitous, and is as strange as magic. It's also the third time it crashes: first with the Internet going down and becoming the Matrix, then the Crash 2.0 that effectively made it wireless (and was made to stop a rogue godlike A.I. from ruling the world), and then the repercussions of that years later. There's free nascent A.I., machine spirits, A.I. getting into metahuman bodies, metahumans that can interact with the Matrix as if it was magic, and the idea that there's this thing called Resonance that may very well be a new form of Magic.
• True, a lot of present-day countries fell apart. And yeah, there's a lot of arcologies. It's the best way to resume everything, because if we speak about the Great Ghost Dance, Mexico becoming a corporate state, the Caribbean becoming a bunch of pirate fiefdoms, Berlin attempting anarchy only to be crushed down, the Euro Wars (hitting close to real life, actually), Japan becoming increasingly imperialistic, amongst *others*, it's almost like a different world on its own. (Important: the world deviated during the 90s, mostly to justify that the world will never catch up to real life.)

It's partly the reason I love the system - it's so deep in terms of lore, yet so familiar to our own world. (And our world still manages to both eerily resemble it and yet grow so distant. Plugged in cyberdecks in 2050, when the Internet went wireless 40 years ago? Functional AI by the 2050s, when we're approaching that by the 2020s?)

The good thing is that, while the games skim over the lore, they still show a lot of it.

(Oh - and forums still exist and are as notorious as they usually are. There's no Twitter/X equivalent, though, unless the 6th Edition of the rules changed that.)

[Errorname]

I'm kind of surprised at how few high profile Shadowrun video games there are. I know they exist, but they're not omnipresent in the way D&D and Warhammer games are, and they don't have a Bloodlines style universally recognized classic either.

[Triaxx]

Honestly if you want to try DDO and are bad at real time combat, Aura Warlock's probably right up your alley.

As for proper Turn-based D&D style I'd suggest Baldur's Gate and setup auto-pause to go off every end round. There are also some solid AI scripts available to help manage party members.

But Temple of Elemental Evil is kind of the purest 3.5e game you can play. 5 foot steps, unwieldy alignment systems. Multi-targeting Magic Missiles... What more could you ask for?

[T.G. Oskar]

Honestly if you want to try DDO and are bad at real time combat, Aura Warlock's probably right up your alley.

It's been so long since I played DDO - mostly because of the connection issues. I quit by the time they added the autoloader - or whatever it was that helped with logging issues - and even that didn't help me connect. I think it was Update 15 or something? I know it was after they added the FR content and IIRC were working the skill tree revamp in Lammania (sp?) but quite a long before they added the Warlock.

But Temple of Elemental Evil is kind of the purest 3.5e game you can play. 5 foot steps, unwieldy alignment systems. Multi-targeting Magic Missiles... What more could you ask for?

It's kinda unforgiving if you lack a guide. I tried it without one and I felt completely lost in Hommlet. It has a pretty darn good character creation system, though.

[Triaxx]

Well I'll say this. Update 62 is dropping in the morning and they've done a lot of work on Lag. They even turned off the limiter meant to help it run on Dial-up. (Which is not a joke.) 15 races, 15 classes, Iconics, and a ton of expansions. Honestly it's probably better than ever.

The first time I played ToEE the only guide available was on Sorcerers place. And it wasn't amazing. But the thrill of clearing out the guardhouse is unmatched.

[Bohandas]

It's kinda unforgiving if you lack a guide. I tried it without one and I felt completely lost in Hommlet. It has a pretty darn good character creation system, though.

Install the Circle of Eight Modpack. It auto-explores the towns and adds an extra low level dungeon that makes it more feasible to skip the XP from Hommlet's confusingly written RP quests

[T.G. Oskar]

Well I'll say this. Update 62 is dropping in the morning and they've done a lot of work on Lag. They even turned off the limiter meant to help it run on Dial-up. (Which is not a joke.) 15 races, 15 classes, Iconics, and a ton of expansions. Honestly it's probably better than ever.

I checked a couple months ago the state of the game through the DDO Wiki and I know it has upgraded a lot. It's interesting that they kept the skill tree revamp almost intact from the moment I left (though you need a CB to plan properly). I also know that they added Gnomes (at last!) and Aasimar, and there's also premium Skill Trees that you can gain through paid quests (Falconer is the one that comes to mind).

I'm not too keen with the Iconics because they were meant to enforce the forced FR intrusion on the game. (I loved DDO because it was on Eberron, specifically Stormreach; making an intrusion where the Lolth Drow basically tried to take over the Vulkoorim felt like a kick in the nads.) I *know* Bladeforged is one of the Iconics, which is still a bit disturbing since it disconnects from the 3.5 lore (Paladins were LG exclusively, but the Lord of Blades is LE; therefore, you're essentially playing an evil Paladin. This is less important now but it was important back then, since it meant you lost your class features.) The only real advantage is to start at level 15 with some great items, but you basically miss the charm of the Waterworks low levels (because fighting Beholders at the deeper levels is just terrifying).

Also surprised that the only added Epic Destiny is when they added the Warlock. (And I'm stunned that they added an Alchemist class, which hasn't translated to 5e because it already exists as an Artificer subclass.)

Unfortunately, I don't think I could download it unless I had a proper set-up. I don't think my Internet speed will be good enough to let me enter, for one, and avoid the time out issue that made me drop the game in the first place. (And I kinda lost any interest in MMOs, since the fun of it is playing it with friends.)

[Triaxx]

I don't entirely mind the FR content. Mostly because it's quite self-contained. There are just a couple harbor quests and the drow you see are actually FR imports not Vulkoorim locals. Only 5 of the Iconics even start in FR and honestly there's not a lot of reason to stay there since the quests available are mostly above your level.

U51 also saw a total revamp of Epic Destinies and a finalizing of the U50 stat adjustment. Prior to it there was a massive step from 28-29 in gear which they realized was a big mistake.

I can definitely understand low net speeds though I play just fine on DSL. As for playing with people... DDO feels more like a single player game with optional Multiplayer. Which I admit feels weird but DDO has never been quite as massive as other MMO's.

[Bohandas]

Wasn't there supposed to be a computer game that was gonna be based on Paranoia? What ever happened to that? Did it come out and I missed it or what?

[TaiLiu]

I had at most a cursory knowledge of the setting before I played Shadowrun and I thought they were all great. Nothing in the combat system was that obtuse and was easy enough to pick up without knowing the setting. The stories do pretty good job of standing on their own. The engine and combat got a fair amount of polish by the time the second one came out, but Returns was still good.

Cool! That's encouraging.

All campaigns do their best to detail their settings (Seattle for Dead Man's Switch, Berlin as an anarchist state for Dragonfall and obviously HK for Hong Kong) and they explain the lore pretty well.

The system itself is pretty simplified. You get stats much like in D&D (Strength, Quickness, Stamina, Logic, Willpower and Charisma), and each skill governs certain skills - Unarmed and Melee Combat for STR, Pistols/SMG/Rifles/Throwing for QUI, Medicine, Decking and Rigging for INT, Sorcery and Chi Casting for WIL and Shamanism and Summoning for CHA. (STA had nothing until Hong Kong, where it gained Cyberware Affinity). Each score has a range from 1 to 10, though the actual maximum is determined by the race: Humans are balanced, Elves are quicker but have poor stamina, Dwarves have decent stamina and Willpower but poor Charisma; Orks have a lot of Strength and Stamina but little Logic, and Trolls take Orks to the extreme. You can't get more points in a skill than your stat: therefore, you can't have more Melee Combat or Unarmed than your base Strength.

Stats are pretty easy to explain: they govern half of the success on things you can do. As you level up those stats, you gain certain things: more weapon slots if you have high STR/QUI, access to more programs if you have high INT, access to more spells with WIL and CHA - extremely important - access to one Etiquette per 2 points of Charisma. This last one is mostly for roleplaying, and it represents how you behave around certain people, which usually means you open up certain dialogue choices that can stop battles or earn you rewards.

Skills govern the other half of success in things you can do, but act as specialties - Unarmed defines how good you are fighting unarmed or with loaded gloves, Melee Combat defines your skill with weapons, Pistols/SMG/Rifles are self-explanatory, Throwing includes both throwing weapons and grenades, and so on. As you level up your skills, you gain special perks with it, such as special actions you can execute - some weapons require you have a specific rank on a skill to use them, also. Spells are divided into two types - Mage spells (Sorcery, using Willpower) and Shaman spells (Conjuration, which use Charisma). In this case, think only slightly in D&D: Mages cast a ton of useful attack spells, debuffs and healing, while Shamans get most buffing/debuffing spells and barriers. Summoning is treated differently.

The way you level up your stats and skills is based on Karma, which acts like XP but added directly. You need to spend a number of Karma points equal to the rank of the stat/skill +1 (therefore, to raise Strength from 4 to 5, you need to spend 5 Karma).

The good thing about SR is that you get archetypes at the start, which auto-fill your stats and skills to however suits your need and give you related starting equipment. This includes Street Samurai (think Fighter but loaded with cyberware that enhances them), Decker (a hacker), Rigger (mechanic, uses drones in combat), Mage (self-explanatory), Shaman (self-explanatory) and Adept (think Monk that self-buffs with magic-based powers). You can develop each character to your liking, but it's recommended to specialize in only one or two things; Sammies should go full Strength and physical combat or full Quickness and go ranged, but not both - and preferably, focus on one weapon only. Deckers could dabble into Rigging but should also specialize. Adepts can learn some Sorcery to cast some spells but will suffer since they also need good Strength to make use of their Adept Powers. Shamans can choose Conjuration and Summoning but that means they'll have their other skills spread thin. As long as you don't try to make a jack of all trades, you should do fine.

Combats in SR are turn-based, but use cover and line of sight rules extensively. You fortunately get the necessary info regarding whether you'll be able to hit or not, the potential damage you can do, and the effects of the cover they're in. You get AP, which is the number of actions you can do, which can be divided into moving or attacking; as you progress in the campaign(s), you get more AP. (Note that spells like Haste and some cyberware/bioware/drugs can boost your AP by 1 or 2. Summoning or jacking into a Drone reduces your AP but grants the Spirit/Drone the ability to act on its own.) The game helps you with in-game tutorials, so you shouldn't get too lost while playing it.

As things go, SR is much easier to understand than games like BG or NWN, and you don't need to understand the TTRPG before playing it, since the stats and skills tell you what you get when you progress. The devs take some liberties in how the stats and skills are interpreted, though, as MANY skills are missing (Melee Combat collapses most of the combat skills; skills such as Shadowing, Hiding, Acrobatics and such are missing from Quickness, a lot of skills are missing from Logic; Etiquette is supposed to be a Charisma skill, not a trait from Charisma) or entirely replaced (Sorcery and Conjuration aren't WIL or CHA skills, but based of a separate Magic stat which starts at 1 and maxes at 6).

One last thing to mention is Essence. You get 6 Essence, and you lose Essence when you put on cyberware/bioware. In the TTRPG, if your Essence goes down to 0, you die (your soul separates from your body, basically). Game-wise, you can't get lower than 1, but it restricts the amount of 'ware you can equip. Furthermore, Essence influences your Magic - the lower your Essence, the harder it is for you to use Magic because you get less spells you can prepare and recovering from their use is much harder. Also, you don't get MP or specific spell slots - you can use Magic effectively at-will, but using the same spell too quickly incurs Drain, which is HP loss. Because recovery in this game is restrained (the Heal spell only recovers your last wound, and you can only really recover using Medkits), this means you don't want to drain yourself too hard. Fortunately, most spells have a quick recovery time of 1 or 2 turns, which means that Mages never really are out of spells. (However, with less Essentia, it takes longer to recover from casting a spell.) So, in short: don't add cyberware if you use magic of any kind (and this includes Adepts).

Thanks for the mechanics summary. This is helpful.

The tech/magic division is interesting. I was envisioning magitech, but it seems like SR has the opposite.

I'm kind of surprised at how few high profile Shadowrun video games there are. I know they exist, but they're not omnipresent in the way D&D and Warhammer games are, and they don't have a Bloodlines style universally recognized classic either.

Maybe it's a popularity thing? D&D 5e is just so so so much more popular than SR.

Honestly if you want to try DDO and are bad at real time combat, Aura Warlock's probably right up your alley.

As for proper Turn-based D&D style I'd suggest Baldur's Gate and setup auto-pause to go off every end round. There are also some solid AI scripts available to help manage party members.

But Temple of Elemental Evil is kind of the purest 3.5e game you can play. 5 foot steps, unwieldy alignment systems. Multi-targeting Magic Missiles... What more could you ask for?

By Aura Warlock, are you referring to the Enlightened Spirit enhancements?

[T.G. Oskar]

I don't entirely mind the FR content. Mostly because it's quite self-contained. There are just a couple harbor quests and the drow you see are actually FR imports not Vulkoorim locals. Only 5 of the Iconics even start in FR and honestly there's not a lot of reason to stay there since the quests available are mostly above your level.

I was playing when that was promoted, and it broke immersion.

Traditionally, the global rewards were given by Vulkoorim. When the FR content started to appear, there was mention that there were "strange Drow" that spoke of an alien goddess. It appears that they were displaced?

And that's part of the issue - DDO was Eberron-centric, and that started displacing its focus just to add more content and attract new players. Considering that there's an FR-centric MMO (Neverwinter) and that the multiverse concept wasn't enforced yet (and that, even by Planescape standards, Eberron is extremely distant), it felt forced.

I can definitely understand low net speeds though I play just fine on DSL. As for playing with people... DDO feels more like a single player game with optional Multiplayer. Which I admit feels weird but DDO has never been quite as massive as other MMO's.

When playing F2P, it can be complicated to do Elite or Epic content on your own (or with a hireling only). IIRC, there are some missions that require at least 3 players to trigger plates. (It could be done with two by using summons, but the content explicitly said you needed 3 players or more before entering. And if you want enough Premium content to buy the races and classes, you need to complete as many missions as possible (particularly after exploiting all the first-time bonuses on every server).

The tech/magic division is interesting. I was envisioning magitech, but it seems like SR has the opposite.

SR has some Magitech, but not as you'd expect (full merger of Magic and Technology).

The most important is mass-producing an algae that serves as a barrier against spirits and astrally-projecting Mages and Shamans, as well as sensors. There's no way to create guns that shoot magic, though. (There's a way to create magic weapons - Weapon Foci - but they only apply to weapons such as swords and axes, not guns.)

This is by design. Magic is supposed to be extremely rare and tied to Essence. Cyberware (and to an extension, Bioware) reduces that Essence, and therefore the individual's connection to Magic, which is assumed as something natural. The setting has a huge "nature vs. civilization" feel when you think about it.

(Also, important note: Cyberware/Bioware also affects those people with innate connections to the Matrix - i.e., Technomancers - but there's a little more leeway in that regard. Proto-Technomancers, aka "Otaku", needed the bare minimum Cyberware - a datajack - to connect, and their powers were erratic. Come 4th Edition, Technomancers could connect wirelessly to the Matrix, but Cyberware/Bioware affected them just like it does to Magicians, reducing their Resonance score. I don't know 5th Edition onwards, but I believe Technomancers are the only characters that can connect to the more advanced version of the Matrix without the newer wireless Cyberdecks.)

[TaiLiu]

And that's part of the issue - DDO was Eberron-centric, and that started displacing its focus just to add more content and attract new players. Considering that there's an FR-centric MMO (Neverwinter) and that the multiverse concept wasn't enforced yet (and that, even by Planescape standards, Eberron is extremely distant), it felt forced.

Yeah, I'm a little grumpy that Eberron is starting to lose its primacy, too. Tieflings and Dragonborn are free, but Shifters are premium and Warforged need a favor-unlock.

SR has some Magitech, but not as you'd expect (full merger of Magic and Technology).

The most important is mass-producing an algae that serves as a barrier against spirits and astrally-projecting Mages and Shamans, as well as sensors. There's no way to create guns that shoot magic, though. (There's a way to create magic weapons - Weapon Foci - but they only apply to weapons such as swords and axes, not guns.)

This is by design. Magic is supposed to be extremely rare and tied to Essence. Cyberware (and to an extension, Bioware) reduces that Essence, and therefore the individual's connection to Magic, which is assumed as something natural. The setting has a huge "nature vs. civilization" feel when you think about it.

(Also, important note: Cyberware/Bioware also affects those people with innate connections to the Matrix - i.e., Technomancers - but there's a little more leeway in that regard. Proto-Technomancers, aka "Otaku", needed the bare minimum Cyberware - a datajack - to connect, and their powers were erratic. Come 4th Edition, Technomancers could connect wirelessly to the Matrix, but Cyberware/Bioware affected them just like it does to Magicians, reducing their Resonance score. I don't know 5th Edition onwards, but I believe Technomancers are the only characters that can connect to the more advanced version of the Matrix without the newer wireless Cyberdecks.)

Oh, neat. Now I'm curious why magic has re-entered the world in a time where technology is at its highest. I found this wiki article, but it doesn't say why.

I also came across the wiki article for Goblinization, which ended with this funny sentence: "This event caused the Coffee Famine of 2022."

[Erloas]

The first part of the linked article does say why. It has nothing to do with the technology of the world, just the changing of time, a natural ebb and flow of magic into the world. Like the fey existed before, as well as many other mythological creatures and events in the past, they went away as the ebb of magic left the world and came back now. There isn't a why, it just happened, and everyone had to deal with it and figure it out. It was recently enough that a lot of the "new" races are treated as second class.

[NeoVid]

I was playing when that was promoted, and it broke immersion.

It didn't for me. The long quest chain you have to adventure through to make the link from Eberron to FR is both awesome and does a good job at presenting the whole thing in Eberron's terms. That Aspect of Lolth who started the whole thing had been on Eberron since the Age of Demons, entombed in Khyber for all this time. It's just our bad luck that she was the first one the Lords of Dust managed to successfully free...

The immersion breaker for me is that it's easy to get to Barovia and back.

Huh, just remembered, 5e finally gave us the official bit of Eberron that's trapped in the mists of Ravenloft. I really hope we'll get to see that in DDO....

When playing F2P, it can be complicated to do Elite or Epic content on your own (or with a hireling only). IIRC, there are some missions that require at least 3 players to trigger plates. (It could be done with two by using summons, but the content explicitly said you needed 3 players or more before entering. And if you want enough Premium content to buy the races and classes, you need to complete as many missions as possible (particularly after exploiting all the first-time bonuses on every server).

Every year for the past few years, they've released a promo code that unlocks every adventure pack in the game except for the newest one. At the same time, they also drop the price of the expansions from thousands of store points to 99, which anyone can earn in days. That promo is a large part of why I'm back after all these years!

Wasn't there supposed to be a computer game that was gonna be based on Paranoia? What ever happened to that? Did it come out and I missed it or what?

Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory released on Epic in December 2019, then was delisted after two months. The Steam page is still up with a 'coming soon.' As far as I've been able to tell, absolutely no one who might be in the know about the game's fate can be contacted. The fact that it's turned into an ungame and been redacted is the most Paranoia thing possible.

[T.G. Oskar]

Oh, neat. Now I'm curious why magic has re-entered the world in a time where technology is at its highest. I found this wiki article, but it doesn't say why.

The first part of the linked article does say why. It has nothing to do with the technology of the world, just the changing of time, a natural ebb and flow of magic into the world. Like the fey existed before, as well as many other mythological creatures and events in the past, they went away as the ebb of magic left the world and came back now. There isn't a why, it just happened, and everyone had to deal with it and figure it out. It was recently enough that a lot of the "new" races are treated as second class.

Mostly this. Magic in SR is like a tide, with ebbs and flows, highs and lows, and happens to be cyclical. Each "World" is what happens when Magic switches from a high to a low and viceversa. The Fifth World (most of recollected history) was a low-magic world, and thus many of the paranormal critters and races went dormant. 2012 (the end of the bak'tun in the Mayan calendar) represented that point where Magic started to wake up.

What made things different from previous Worlds is that, as you mentioned, technology advanced at a rapid pace, to the point that those who existed since the end of the Fourth World had to adapt. Magic entering a "high tide" phase was inevitable but not expected; those remnants of the Fourth World didn't expect, however, the technological advancements of the Sixth World, to the point that there's a whole new world (the Matrix) developed in the interim.

It didn't for me. The long quest chain you have to adventure through to make the link from Eberron to FR is both awesome and does a good job at presenting the whole thing in Eberron's terms. That Aspect of Lolth who started the whole thing had been on Eberron since the Age of Demons, entombed in Khyber for all this time. It's just our bad luck that she was the first one the Lords of Dust managed to successfully free...

The Aspect of Lolth was an attempt to hammer the multiverse concept into Eberron. I know the 3.5 books had a suggestion where you could have Corellon and Lolth in Eberron, with the former (as well as the rest of the Seldarine) being ancestral spirits of the Valenar while Lolth was supposed to be a Lord of Dust; the same applies to Bahamut and Tiamat, where the latter was also meant to be a Lord of Dust. However, this was mostly to justify adding the Yochlol and the spider demons.

The issue is that it reinforces the idea that all Drow are part of a twisted matriarchal society no matter where, which wasn't supposed to be the thing with Eberron, given the existence of the Vulkoorim (which aren't good per se but aren't always evil; they ARE treacherous, though), as well as the other two groups (the Sulatar that appear later in the game and the Umbragen which are bitter for being abandoned but are actually holding something even worse. That was a reinterpretation of the Drow that got diluted by adding the "traditional" drow.

The main issue was that Eberron was designed to be divorced from all the other planes, as by 3rd Edition Planescape was no longer supported as a setting (even though the Planar Handbook dealt with aspects of the setting). 4e forced a merger in order to introduce the new Tieflings (which were originally touched by the plane of Shavarath, either by heritage or by contact with the coterminous plane) and badly hammered Baator as an intruding plane, only to justify why Asmodeus was there. That lacerated the uniqueness of the setting, as now Eberron had Dragonborn and Tieflings just like in the other settings, rather than their own versions.

The immersion breaker for me is that it's easy to get to Barovia and back.

Huh, just remembered, 5e finally gave us the official bit of Eberron that's trapped in the mists of Ravenloft. I really hope we'll get to see that in DDO....

That's a specific thing from Ravenloft that supersedes the general rule - the Demiplane of Dread is supposed to reach even the most distant places.

And speaking of the Cyre 1313 bit - unless they negotiate with Square-Enix, I doubt they'll try to do it. Though, it'd be fun if they could add some references to it.

Every year for the past few years, they've released a promo code that unlocks every adventure pack in the game except for the newest one. At the same time, they also drop the price of the expansions from thousands of store points to 99, which anyone can earn in days. That promo is a large part of why I'm back after all these years!

That shows how much it's been since I've played. I bought some of the cards to get the stuff I wanted (specifically Warforged and Artificer, because you couldn't get Warforged unless you had favor with House Cannith, and most of the favor was locked behind the quests), because trying to get the right amount of points from favor alone was crazy.

[Triaxx]

Given the design principle of Eberron is: stuff happens let the players sort it out...

That said if you're a tabletop and version purist, there's a lot to hate about DDO. To the point I would say avoid it.

[NeoVid]

The main issue was that Eberron was designed to be divorced from all the other planes, as by 3rd Edition Planescape was no longer supported as a setting (even though the Planar Handbook dealt with aspects of the setting). 4e forced a merger in order to introduce the new Tieflings (which were originally touched by the plane of Shavarath, either by heritage or by contact with the coterminous plane) and badly hammered Baator as an intruding plane, only to justify why Asmodeus was there. That lacerated the uniqueness of the setting, as now Eberron had Dragonborn and Tieflings just like in the other settings, rather than their own versions.

For good or bad, that ship has sailed in DDO. With the Codex of Infinite Planes storyline over the past few years, the Gatekeepers have been policing planar anomalies ranging from the Temple of Elemental Evil to Saltmarsh, and now with Vecna showing up, it's been confirmed that the Ring of Siberys in DDO is damaged and planar incursions are just going to get worse in the future. A pretty cool in-world way to handle it, I think, but I can see why it would be disappointing to someone who wants more Eberron.

That's a specific thing from Ravenloft that supersedes the general rule - the Demiplane of Dread is supposed to reach even the most distant places.

And speaking of the Cyre 1313 bit - unless they negotiate with Square-Enix, I doubt they'll try to do it. Though, it'd be fun if they could add some references to it.

What's the Square connection? I'm pretty sure we wouldn't end up suplexing this train.

That shows how much it's been since I've played. I bought some of the cards to get the stuff I wanted (specifically Warforged and Artificer, because you couldn't get Warforged unless you had favor with House Cannith, and most of the favor was locked behind the quests), because trying to get the right amount of points from favor alone was crazy.

I wouldn't be surprised if you last played more recently than I did. I was a fanatic player for years, but I stopped cold all of a sudden around Update 20 and didn't come back until the promo code this year... at update 58.

[TaiLiu]

The first part of the linked article does say why. It has nothing to do with the technology of the world, just the changing of time, a natural ebb and flow of magic into the world. Like the fey existed before, as well as many other mythological creatures and events in the past, they went away as the ebb of magic left the world and came back now. There isn't a why, it just happened, and everyone had to deal with it and figure it out. It was recently enough that a lot of the "new" races are treated as second class.

Sorry. I appreciate the explanation, but I'm a bit confused. You say the article says why, but then you also say there isn't a why. Which is it?

Mostly this. Magic in SR is like a tide, with ebbs and flows, highs and lows, and happens to be cyclical. Each "World" is what happens when Magic switches from a high to a low and viceversa. The Fifth World (most of recollected history) was a low-magic world, and thus many of the paranormal critters and races went dormant. 2012 (the end of the bak'tun in the Mayan calendar) represented that point where Magic started to wake up.

What made things different from previous Worlds is that, as you mentioned, technology advanced at a rapid pace, to the point that those who existed since the end of the Fourth World had to adapt. Magic entering a "high tide" phase was inevitable but not expected; those remnants of the Fourth World didn't expect, however, the technological advancements of the Sixth World, to the point that there's a whole new world (the Matrix) developed in the interim.

I think I understand the tide metaphor. But what's the mechanism responsible for it? Does it have to do with certain celestial bodies and their approximation to Earth? Halley's comet is responsible for some magic stuff.

[T.G. Oskar]

I think I understand the tide metaphor. But what's the mechanism responsible for it? Does it have to do with certain celestial bodies and their approximation to Earth? Halley's comet is responsible for some magic stuff.

Halley's Comet only triggered SURGE, which caused the Changelings (i.e., anthropomorphic animal-human hybrids) to emerge; it's not what triggers the surge of Magic, but a byproduct of it.

The exact mechanism is one of the things that the lore leaves deliberately unexplained. Judging by how it uses 2012 and the Mayan end of the world concept, it seems to happen every certain amount of years. The best explanation is, "it was supposed to happen and it happened".

One thing that happened during this iteration that might explain how it works is the Great Ghost Dance and its results. When the First Nations brought this into effect, it caused Mana to pour faster than ever, This is BAD, because it brings the attention of the Horrors.

The Horrors are essentially the setting's interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos (but not being the Elder Gods and creatures OF the Mythos). The best I can say about the Horrors is - nope. Nope. You don't want to deal with them, period.

Spoiler

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Horrors are from the depths of the metaplanes, effectively making them from another dimension. They sense when Mana is spiking in the world and make their way, and the results aren't pretty. Insect Spirits, which are essentially alien spirits that are associated with insects because of the shape they take when arriving to Earth, only exist to consume and propagate. Shedim are bodysnatching spirits that hate metahumankind, causing wars and other things. And these are merely the heralds.

That said - the reason why the Horrors are so mysterious is because they're merely being referenced and rarely intended to be used. This is because Horrors belong to the alternate sword & sorcery setting from the original company that developed Shadowrun, Earthdawn. The Horrors were main antagonists in the story, which was supposed to deal with Earth in the Fourth World (hence, before known history). Because of this, and because Shadowrun was supposed to be the sequel, Horrors are referenced but legally can't be used.

Lore-wise, the only reason the Horrors haven't appeared in full force is because one of the Great Dragons, Dunkelzahn (who was recently elected and confirmed as President of the UCAS), offed himself with a super-bomb in order to plug the big hole caused by the GGD. Great Dragons work to keep the Horrors at bay, but some suspect that technology may be key to stopping them once and for all.

That said, this is mostly a byproduct of Mana spiking into the world and not its cause. There's no defined cause, just as there's no given explanation to what's Resonance.

[Bavarian itP]

Thanks for the rec! Wikipedia tells me that it was controversial cuz of a possible gay relationship in-game. Sounds like a positive to me.

It was also controversial because of a ****load of bugs. That was before the era of Steam and Bethesda, so it was a big deal. You couldn't even loot your enemies' corpses. I don't think I need to tell anyone on this forums how useless a D&D game is if you can't loot your enemies' corpses

[Triaxx]

Since I totally forgot to respond, yes there are still some things which aren't free but most of them can either be picked up with points earned while playing or via Favor. Artificier and the Falconry Universal Tree are the two things I'd pay points for because both are irritating to unlock via favor.

There is even one streamer who's now intermittant due to real life stuff who earned everything via points and became 'uber-completionist' without spending money on the game.

Fortunately each server offer's first time bonuses, meaning you can easily get a leg up on things.