It sounds to me like the lack of non combat stuff may be down more to your party than the system. Have played in parties like that! In fact our previous Shadowrun we used to spend far longer planning a run than performing it, but the current campaign just goes combat first! Same players, different approach. I think so far our Star Wars party has had two fights in a dozen sessions.

I know what you mean about rules in different books, but at least here it is pretty easy to make new items. Pretty much any item is either "tools for the job", "gives bonus dice" or "removes setback dice", depending on it's role, I suggest.

I wouldn't want to cite Shadowrun in a conversation about rule clarity! (Was GMing it last night!)

The Core books are designed to be broad, covering every aspect of the game with depth only where actually required.

The rules even suggest that Initiative can be used in social encounters, it's called Structured Time not Combat Time for a reason. It sounds like your group is stuck in your own bubble and need some interesting outside influence. Your group need to get inspired to try more than combat.

There are a couple of ways to do it, but honestly the best is to start an entire campaign where it's agreed that Combat will be a rare thing. Force yourselves outside of the comfort zone and come up with more creative encounters.

The modular or optional elements of this system are exactly that, you don't need them. Every skill has detailed descriptions of their uses, use those for inspiration instead.

1 hour ago, Reshy said:

Why hide rules for such in obscure source books that most players won't ever read? These things ought to be included in the CRB.

It was likely a blend of two things. One, a core book has a limited amount of space and while having everything in one book would be great, the $500 price tag might scare people away. And Two, likely they wanted to make money by spreading out their interesting ideas across multiple books. Money they can use to pay their employees, design more books, keep the Disney license active. Since most companies don't operate under grossly inflated profit margins, I expect save some design space for additional books is a smart move on their part.

Are you sure you're on the right boards? SWRPG is a lot of things, but it sure isn't the game to play if you don't like a lot of supplemental books. Don't get me wrong, it plays find without all the splat books, but you know, you might have to design a little bit yourself. Or in the case of the tracker you were complaining about, I don't know, read through the whole equipment section of the core book.

...

1 hour ago, Darzil said:

It sounds to me like the lack of non combat stuff may be down more to your party than the system. Have played in parties like that! In fact our previous Shadowrun we used to spend far longer planning a run than performing it, but the current campaign just goes combat first! Same players, different approach. I think so far our Star Wars party has had two fights in a dozen sessions.

I'd agree with this. We have a tendency to go the other direction and use social skills to eliminate intended combat encounters. Frankly, I've found that crazy deception skills do more to deal with enemies than weapon skills. Especially when combined with coerce, negotiate, and charm.

I've used a disguise kit + optical camouflage to pretend to be an imperial officer (although now I'm going to have to buy that holo-disguise thing from No Disintregations to do the trick), and gotten all sorts of concessions from pirates/criminals who want to avoid Imperial notice. Another in our party has gotten out of a spy-situation with a blown stealth check by pretending to be IT, sent by the boss to upgrade security.

Of course, sometimes we get handed a delicate negotiation mission and decide to screw it, kill everyone, and just take the thing we were supposed to buy. I guess it can go either way. Whatever the GM is unprepared for, I suppose.

I don't think obscure sourcebook is how I would describe it, seeing as how a good 60+% of the activity here is wondering when the next book will be out.

I may have to look into this issue more, it almost seems as if upgrading checks based on cover/concealment should be a thing. Hide in trees add a setback die, hide behind a speeder's engine upgrade a purple to a red. Hide behind a durasteel crate either add a purple or upgrade to a red.

The F&D core book has a section dedicated to cover/concealment already. 1 black die for soft cover, add more depending what it is.

There's also dodge which upgrades difficulty at the cost of strain..

In theory one could have a 2 soak 2 def armor vs a medium to long ranged attack (2 or 3 purple) which would go from a 2 or 3 die pool to 1 (or more red based on ranks of Dodge), plus 3 black. Unless the attack is made with a 3+ yellow pool the likelihood of being severely hit is minimal.

15 minutes ago, ASCI Blue said:

I may have to look into this issue more, it almost seems as if upgrading checks based on cover/concealment should be a thing. Hide in trees add a setback die, hide behind a speeder's engine upgrade a purple to a red. Hide behind a durasteel crate either add a purple or upgrade to a red.

Upgrading to a challenge dice adds even less of a chance of a failure than a setback does and actually produces less threat than the purple dice did before the upgrade. That being said, I agree with the general point you getting across. When I GM I regularly add non-standard effects for cover. Sometimes I have it add soak (when it's easily shot through), othertimes I let it add stackable setback dice and sometimes if the cover is really good (like firing out of a murder-hole) I'll add difficulty dice. I usually reserve upgrading dice for situations that increase the risk of danger for the shooter, like firing around allies or when the cover has a hit chance of ricochet.

I'd like to see how that works out, numbers aren't my strong point. Looking at the dice setback has 2 blanks vs a purple's 1 and a red's 1. Based off a quick count red has 8 failures to a purple's 4, and a black's 2. So a red die has 66% chance of failure vs a purple's 50% chance and red's 33%.

Your idea of adding soak is good, I might have to steal it.

19 hours ago, Reshy said:

Of the lot I only have keeping the peace, so I can't just use those rules without forking over a lot of money. Why hide rules for such in obscure source books that most players won't ever read? These things ought to be included in the CRB.

Because sales. The whole business strategy of FFG with swrpg is to sell you the setting, rules and gear bit by bit. That is good in context that you only need to buy what interest you and good for FFG because in most cases it means you make $1,000 out of a group, because everything is interesting,sometimes even essential. It makes them money, hides the bad editing somewhat, because now it is fragmented over 50 books (about 40 right now, but we still missing a good amount of books) or so anyway. and makes FFG with $30 per book a nice and clean $1500 without anyone can call their system overpriced. And the best part? The splatbooks are 100 pages a piece, so super thin, cheap to write, layout and edit. Especially if you use the low standards ffg has for all those 3 categories °_^
It still sells, because at its core the system is still cool. the splatbooks are still fun, and the business strategy works out for them.

32 minutes ago, ASCI Blue said:

I'd like to see how that works out, numbers aren't my strong point. Looking at the dice setback has 2 blanks vs a purple's 1 and a red's 1. Based off a quick count red has 8 failures to a purple's 4, and a black's 2. So a red die has 66% chance of failure vs a purple's 50% chance and red's 33%.

Your idea of adding soak is good, I might have to steal it.

Rule of thumb 1 setback = challenge dice upgrade - despair chance, 2 setback dice = 1 difficulty dice. If you want to build an avoidance tank you need all three components on massive values to have a chance to prevent hits reliable, which involves spending tons of strain for stuff like dodge, because if you upgrade a pool often enough you will start to add dice as well and adding dice is key to prevent getting hit.

23 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Because sales. The whole business strategy of FFG with swrpg is to sell you the setting, rules and gear bit by bit. That is good in context that you only need to buy what interest you and good for FFG because in most cases it means you make $1,000 out of a group, because everything is interesting,sometimes even essential. It makes them money, hides the bad editing somewhat, because now it is fragmented over 50 books (about 40 right now, but we still missing a good amount of books) or so anyway. and makes FFG with $30 per book a nice and clean $1500 without anyone can call their system overpriced. And the best part? The splatbooks are 100 pages a piece, so super thin, cheap to write, layout and edit. Especially if you use the low standards ffg has for all those 3 categories °_^
It still sells, because at its core the system is still cool. the splatbooks are still fun, and the business strategy works out for them.

I still believe that the rules for using skills should be in the first source to canonize said skill.

5 minutes ago, Reshy said:

I still believe that the rules for using skills should be in the first source to canonize said skill.

That's fair and I think it's safe to say that if we ever see a second edition then they will likely remedy that. The crafting rules, contacts, and several others come to mind. Honestly though, this isn't an issue unique to FFG. As any system ages, new rules and subsystems come out that should likely be included in the core books. FFG just happens to be very prolific with their book production. Compared to other companies who have tried similar release schedules <cough> D&D 3.5ed <cough><cough> I'd say they do a phenomenal job of keeping their quality high and there mechanics reasonably balanced and power creep free... maybe power creep light.