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Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 4 2011, 01:08 PM

So, yeah. I've had this for awhile, but haven't really had the opportunity to really delve through it. As I'm running a Denver campaign at the moment, I thought that the information in it would be helpful to the campaign, and provide an update historically as to what was going on. As well, it was advertised to sell the "history" of the Sixth World, so I was all, "okay, let's read this."

So I did. And to tell you the truth, I wasn't much impressed.

You all know my leanings at the moment in regards to CGL. If not, you can read the sig. I just want to make sure people understand that what I'm about to say is not to nay-say CGL or its writers, blah blah blah - I just want to get my thoughts down and share them with friends.

Let's start with the History / Timeline section. Summation: Not impressed. This was billed as the complete Shadowrun timeline, with every little event mentioned in some way. Yes, a lot of history is given - in little sideboxes. The main event is a collection of false documents showing what was going on around the time of each event. Which is cool, in theory - I'm the sort of nerd that would get into that sort of thing. But in practice, it's confusing, even for someone who has for years read these books. I actually had to stop and consult the Sixth World Wiki, on a few events, and I also had to look at what exact year it was in order to tell what the hell the document was even talking about. This is not good design; this is the opposite; it is undesign.

Also, this is my first brush with /dev/grrrl. And I want to throttle her. "Like, hi, I'm like, a shadowrunner, and, um, stuff?" First off, why would 'Jack invite her into a private, heavily experienced, heavily professional setting, when all she's going to do is ask dumb questions like, "um, yeah, what happened at the SOX? Tee-hee!". The cognitive dissonance threw me off when I was actually involved in reading the runner commentary.

Secondly, look at how she talks! Argh! This is more apt for someone reading ShadowSEA or any of the other sorta-gray 'runner messageboards out there.

But my main problem with her is that she is such a false character, it's nutty. You want to introduce a sympathetic female runner? You've got one in the form of Netcat. I know she's not everyone's cuppa, but at least she's a female character that isn't so...I hate to use the term, feminine. /dev/grrrl is a sixteen year old with pink fingernail polish using a unicorn avatar in an environment where one talker is a ghoul, another is an immortal elf, and another is a BTL-burned ex-addict. She's so girly, and so obviously forced that it feels like there was an admission from on high that they needed to fill a key demographic. What key demographic? I can't talk transgender cyberware in an Augmentation thread without being jumped on by twenty or so people, but suddenly there's some tween, Twilight lovin' faction in the fandom we need to fulfill? Que wha?

If you want to use an obvious "newb", just have 'Jack invite GnuB on, because at least he'd make sense and have a callback to a (sort of) fan favorite. /dev/grrrl is so false it's jarring. See? The mere fact that I wrote more about one stupid character than I did about the shitty timeline writing kind of gives a hint here, folks. Or you could always point at the name itself, blech...

Secondly, the Atlas itself. While it is a good resource, and bears some of the best shadowtalk, it also isn't as, well, wide-ranging as I'd hoped. I'd hoped for more information on certain key areas, like a little more on Australia (seriously, they got a piece of fiction and one write-up? Huh?) and some more on corporate interests in Russia. Tunguska got a shout-out, which I dug, and there's interesting stuff in there about the JIS. Hell, I'll give that the Denver write-up was pretty expansive.

But it just felt like there should have been more. It felt like something was missing, and I can't put my finger on what. I will say that I note obvious inclusions of plothooks for (now) plots coming out - the fallout of tempo, the escalating love for the terrible War! plot - and I can see a few that might be on the horizon. But seriously, these felt like quickie write-ups tacked on to take advantage of the name.

All in all, just not impressed with this and actually dismayed by, *sigh*, /dev/grrrl. As a quickie resource, fine. As what it could have been? A great guide to get a newbie SR gm / player caught up to speed? Terrible. The timeline is useless and has its ass kicked by the Sixth World Wiki. The locations? Better, but needed more fleshing out. /dev/grrl? Thrown out a well. I'm sorry, I just had to get that out there. I'm turning into hermit, or something.

Posted by: Fortinbras Mar 4 2011, 01:46 PM

I kinda like it.

Posted by: Brazilian_Shinobi Mar 4 2011, 02:31 PM

/dev/grrrl quite possibly is Jack's niece or something.
Yeah, I don't like her either.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 4 2011, 03:54 PM

She does fit a niche that I think only one other Shadowtalkers have: A Corporate Upbringing.

Fine, she doesn't know the best about a lot of stuff, due to her Corporate Education (Read: Brainwashing that obviously didn't take), but she does know a fair amount about how Suits live their lives and how they go about their day, an invaluable asset. And she's young and impressionable, so they can twist her mind the way they like... I mean, tell her the truth about the world and prepare her to protect herself against the worst of it.

I'm protecting FastJack, BTW. She needs a big smack of "Learn to research before asking". There's lots of files available on Black BBSes.

And if she is related to FastJack, she's more likely a Great Niece. He's in his early '70s after all.

Posted by: Wesley Street Mar 8 2011, 03:01 PM

SWA was yet another missed opportunity. Yeah, the art was nice but the format of the book was a disappointment. The timeline was annoying (especially the major typos that a blind man would have caught) and failed to touch on anything that wasn't globally reaching. So pretty much every piece of fluff from 1st ed. and 2nd ed. published adventures was ignored unless it tied into the Bugs.

The actual nation entries suffered from too-many-writers syndrome. The UK, CalFree, Tir na Nog, Tir Tairngire, the UCAS, the NAN, and the AGS had entire books written specifically for them so I expected a hell of a lot more than what I was given. I don't understand why the Algonkian-Manitou Council warranted an entire boring entry yet we received zilch for the Korean peninsula, Indochina (War! also dropped the bomb [pun intended] by overlooking the Dega Alliance conflict in Vietnam), the South Pacific, or any other part of China that wasn't Shaanxi or Hong Kong. Wasn't a quarter of Shadows of Asia set aside for China? No mention of the historic rift between Palestine & Israel actually healing as of 2065... which makes the entire Jerusalem area much more interesting and ironic considering the perpetual warfare and balkanization of the rest of the globe. The Middle East was barely touched! Why? Hello! Alliance for Allah or New Islamic Jihad ring a bell? Those were pretty big events!

The whole "well, we wanted to write a book that touched a little bit of everything" argument holds no water when it fails to set out to even accomplish that. And what's even more disappointing is that this should not have been a difficult project to develop! Seriously, all the writers really needed to do was copypasta one of the three Shadows of... books from 3rd ed., excise the shadowgibberish and update it. There was no rules creation involved. All the history was already there and just needed a bit of tweaking. SWA could have been a smashing success!

Also... why does every map of North America show (former) state borders in the NAN? Don't the tribal councils have better things to do than maintain artificial jurisdictions set up by 19th century Caucasian settlers? That drives me nuts.

Posted by: Eratosthenes Mar 8 2011, 03:42 PM

You don't like /dev/grrl because she's...girly? Huh?

You know girls do exist? The type that like pink fingernail polish, etc. etc. drekcetera. And some are techie. She's a character, like all the others. I hate Clockwork, for obvious reasons, but I also realize he's a plausible character in the setting.

As for the setting/layout? You found it confusing? How? All the documents, IIRC, directly pertained to something in the timeline box (with perhaps a few exceptions). And I saw the potential for a ton of hooks and plotlines amidst the vast variety of fluff presented. Heck, the entire book was fluff, detailing the kinds of things that go on. And the chats supplied ideas/hints/pokes at runs that were done in the past (which could form the basis for runs of the future...The Future!) Nevermind the plethora of alternative locations, allowing for the occasional run outside the borders of whatever chosen locale.

(As for state borders, that's probably more for the reader than for accuracy; one could argue that the new powers-that-be maintain the old organizations/power structures/political divisons for management purposes)

Posted by: Fatum Mar 8 2011, 04:46 PM

I haven't met a single pink-fingernail-polish girl who'd be a world class professional (which Jackpoint is supposed to unite). Actually, who'd be above barely qualified middle-level management.
See, the problem with /dev/grrl is exactly that: she does not seem to be competent enough in anything to warrant her being invited to the VPN. She's a hacker? Big deal, there's a bunch of better ones there already. A corp kid? Don't make me laugh, those are some deep secrets she's unveiling... Not that I care that much, in fact, compared to the rest of the drek CGL is printing, a bit of useless shadowtalk is really not that significant.

Also, I believe we've discussed SWA already, and it's... well, let's just say, underwhelming, and complicating the matters where it's supposed to clear them up.

Posted by: Megu Mar 8 2011, 05:21 PM

...I like /dev/grrl too. She's adorable, which is probably why she's not getting the Let Me Google That For You treatment when she asks dumb questions.

Posted by: Angelone Mar 8 2011, 05:38 PM

/dev/grrl does confuse me with how she got invited to the board, over say posters who have been in the shadows longer and have been given conditional access to Jackpoint before, such as Lei Kung or Pyramid Watcher. I was under the impression she was a technomancer, not a hacker though. I have no real problems with her.

Edit- I don't miss Fatima at all. Good call on that, killing off the Jackpointer who probably brought the least to the table while still showing they can die.

Posted by: Mäx Mar 8 2011, 07:43 PM

Why would anyone buy a book thats copypasta of books they allready own?

Posted by: ggodo Mar 8 2011, 08:07 PM

I miss Puck. He may have been one hell of a confusing traitorous otaku, but I thought he was interesting. I didn't even notice Fatima was dead.

Posted by: Fatum Mar 8 2011, 08:14 PM

Did you buy 6WA?

Posted by: Mäx Mar 8 2011, 08:21 PM

Yes, its not a copypasta of previous books, at least as far as i have noticed.

Posted by: Angelone Mar 8 2011, 08:28 PM

Oh wow, I forgot Puck was gone. I miss him too, he was an interesting character. Fatima really wasn't. Maybe I should have spoilered she was dead in my above post... Oh well.

Posted by: Wesley Street Mar 8 2011, 08:29 PM

It would have been a better book if it was. Obviously that wouldn't have been the ideal approach. But it would have been better than what we got.

I'm amazed that anyone could drop the ball on a fluff book that rehashed existing locations. The heavy lifting had already done for the writers by the 1st-3rd ed. crews.


/dev/grrl is not a technomancer. So far as has been revealed amongst the Jackpoint crew that title belongs solely to Netcat.

Posted by: Fatum Mar 8 2011, 10:14 PM

The history section is pretty much a compilation from previous books; the geography is a few additions (of dubious quality) strapped on top the badly copypasted material from the same source.

Posted by: Ancient History Mar 8 2011, 10:32 PM

To understand /dev/grrl, you have to understand Aaron Pavao, her creator. Aaron is an intelligent soul, and we have fought tooth and fucking nail about everything from fluff and mechanics to how much we, as individuals, loved the game, so please take the following critique with whatever size grain of salt you feel necessary.

/dev/grrl is a waste of ink. She's (loosely) based on some student or other of Aaron's and she is the single most annoying, worthless, pointless, non-Immortal Elf munchkin in the shadowtalker pool, and that's saying a lot. Her nominal point of existing is to be the voice of youth on the boards - which is fine, considering the next-youngest, Slamm-0!, is in his later twenties with a baby on the way. The problem starts when you get to the fact that she's a child genius (stretching things a bit), and an elf (dammit, not another elf), and has some weird cultural mish-mash background that seems "cool" (I honestly forget what all she's supposed to be, but I swear there was Irish and AmerInd in there at one point).

Don't get me wrong, you need a character willing to be stupid and inexperienced enough to ask dumb or innocent questions, because it's a great excuse to cram exposition into a text. The problem is, the character is so stupid and inexperienced they have nothing valuable to actually contribute. /dev/grrl does nothing, knows nothing, her major contribution involved a fantasy-land field trip to the wilds of Mongolia, and she posted her homework on the virtual fridge in Jackpoint for the adults to grade and argue over.

Not that Aaron is alone to blame. I mean, he created her, but other writers used her too. The damned thing is, nobody knows what the hell to do with her. I had her babysitting Piston's nieces at some point.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 9 2011, 03:37 AM

I can think of a few ways to work with a character like that. But I'm a sick, twisted fellow who loves to torment characters badly. Perhaps some folks might consider my character Speedster in the same group as /dev/grrl... But I hopefully gave her a bit more of a personality and interesting history...

That bit of information is useful, AH, thanks for the heads up as to the creation of the character.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 9 2011, 04:08 AM

Not to toot my own horn here, but are you familiar with my posting habit on Dumpshock to any degree? I've talked a whole bunch of times about how I have a girly-girl as a fellow gamer and a wife, and how I encourage that sort of thing in the gaming hobby. Hell, I mentioned the fact that I've fought for more LBGTG characters in the Shadowrun universe in the very opening post.

But that's not why /dev/grrl annoys me. She annoys me for the simple fact that she simply doesn't fit in to the rest of the Jackpoint crew. In fact, it's kind of why I name dropped Hanibelle, Netcat, Fatima, and others - especially 'Cat - because they're not just females but that they're really great, strong female characters in a hobby where you don't get that sort of thing. You get chicks with giant guns, or cyber-elf-ninja-River-wannabes that serve as masturbatory fantasies for the male audience. That's kind of a generalization, but please, feel free to flip through the vast majority of artwork featuring a female in it - and there you go.

For that point, /d/ just doesn't fit. What niche does she fill? Why would Fastjack - arguably one of the greatest deckers in the Sixth World - invite some newbie girl that has to be handheld through the secret history of the world to his private VPN network filled with hardened, toughened mercenaries? It doesn't fit, and it stinks of trying to fulfill a need that isn't really needed.

As I said: if they needed someone to be a dumb noob window for us readers, just use GnuB; he's well known enough for old schoolers to get a nostalgic buzz out of, and he actually fits into the established milieu that is the Jackpoint community.


I'm not going to spend my whole night responding to this, but to sum up: instead of discussing the actual big events of each year presented, we'd often get something entirely unrelated. You get one quick magazine article - sometimes about a much smaller, who cares event, instead of seeing the reactions to the Big Event. I'm thinking specifically of things like the Native War, the Year of the Comet, Goblinization Day...just random articles that no one cares about.

It smacks of "get this book out so that we can make money off of it" and it sucks. Do yourself a favor: look around Dumpshock for discussion on the German sister book that came out a few years ago - I think it's called Die .6 Der Welt (and here comes the Germans to correct me, thanks guys) - and see what the book should have been - a book worthy of the twenty year anniversary of SR.

Posted by: ggodo Mar 9 2011, 04:15 AM

Now I feel like I need to read that. Well, It sounds like she got a better send off than Puck. Little blurb at the front of a chapter my ass.

Posted by: toturi Mar 9 2011, 04:22 AM

I wonder... how good/bad are her social dice pools supposed to be?

Posted by: Fatum Mar 9 2011, 04:30 AM

Eh, I believe, in fact, that Puck being captured by MCT and experimented on was in a little blurb at the front of a chapter. So it's not really "gone" yet for all we know, is it?

Posted by: CanRay Mar 9 2011, 04:52 AM

Well, parts of him are gone...

Posted by: ggodo Mar 9 2011, 06:59 AM

I guess what matters are which parts, and is otaku brain in a jar feasible.

Also, anyone know when SixthWorldWiki comes back up? I really want to figure out who Fatima is.

Posted by: Critias Mar 9 2011, 07:27 AM

Not for nothing, and I don't mean to show a hand too soon or anything -- but Puck's certainly neither entirely "gone" nor forgotten. There are some plans. Some of us writers liked the little bastard, too.

Posted by: Grinder Mar 9 2011, 08:20 AM

Almanach der 6. Welt - http://www.pegasus.de/1988.html

Posted by: Grinder Mar 9 2011, 08:20 AM

This.

Posted by: Blade Mar 9 2011, 09:26 AM

She's written a decent article about Corporate Living in the Corporate Guide. She can give insights into the way corpers think.

Posted by: Sengir Mar 9 2011, 11:45 AM

That's just the German Edition of the 6WA, I think he meant http://www.shadowhelix.de/Die_6._Welt_(Quelle)

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 9 2011, 11:56 AM

That's the one, yup.

Posted by: Wesley Street Mar 9 2011, 01:49 PM

I don't have a huge hate-on for /dev/grrl and I can see the rationale for why she would be the voice for this section. But as an ex-corp employee Nephrine could have fulfilled the same purpose.

There have been attempts in the past to portray /dev/grrl as some sort of child prodigy which could explain her inclusion in Jackpoint. But the "durr, like, what's that?" tone some writers give her undercuts that.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 9 2011, 02:45 PM

Yep, and that's part of the problem. There are a lot of previously established characters in the Sixth World, specifically on Jackpoint, even, that would fulfill the need that /d/ (this is my own private joke) is supposed to be filling. So she jars against previous established canon, and she doesn't bring anything new or poignant to the table. No offense to Aaron either; I can totally see creating a character and then having other people use and abuse her.

To sum up my problem with /d/, I present you http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/1/9/. But reverse the position - it's one girl shouting "Barbie Horse Adventures!" in the middle of the lineup from The Usual Suspects.

She doesn't fit, please acquit.

Posted by: Eimi Mar 9 2011, 02:54 PM

Is the elf teenager hacker in that one chapter story about a team dealing with their johnson on a job to infiltrate a sports stadium supposed to be /dev/grrl? I mean, I kind of thought she might be, what with being a teenage hacker that's still SINned enough to still be attending school and whatnot, but I wasn't sure.

The character in the story was certainly annoying and surly enough to fit some of /dev/grrl's shadowtalk personality, and exudes the whole "arrogant child/teenage prodigy" attitude quite profusely.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 9 2011, 04:45 PM

Come on, guys, a few bad 'Runs, finding out about Shedim, maybe being kidnapped by some Insect Spirits, she'll be just like the rest of the cynical screwheads that are on JackPoint.

Just need to roughen her up.

A lot.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Mar 9 2011, 06:18 PM

Indeed... Problem Solved...

Posted by: Grinder Mar 9 2011, 06:25 PM

D'oh! That's what I meant too.

Posted by: Fatum Mar 9 2011, 07:17 PM

Damn you guys, now I'm spending my next two months hunting it down, waiting for it, and then trying to decipher the contents.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 9 2011, 09:28 PM

Die .6 Welt is one of the reasons I'd like to learn German, yes.

Posted by: Fatum Mar 9 2011, 10:03 PM

Damn wurst-munchers get all the cool toys! Off with them!

Posted by: CanRay Mar 9 2011, 10:07 PM

I want to be able to read German now, too... Seems the books are getting rave reviews here...

Hey, did the German company put out a version of War!?

Posted by: Fatum Mar 9 2011, 10:14 PM

Not that I know of. They have an awesomely-designed book on Berlin, though.

Now, it's not like learning the basics of German is that difficult, if you know any languages with grammar genders, cases, and such, already. So, if you want to, you can :3

Posted by: CanRay Mar 9 2011, 10:20 PM

I couldn't learn French.

In Canada.

In the city said to have the largest percentage of Francophones in Canada outside of Quebec.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why a Tree is Male and a Table a Female!

Posted by: Fatum Mar 9 2011, 10:26 PM

Well, because that's how things are. Why are ships female in English?
Also, if you find consolation in it, a table is male in German, as well as a tree.
You just learn the nouns along with the gender-defining articles, and that's it.

Posted by: Sengir Mar 9 2011, 10:35 PM

Not yet, but it's in the making. http://sirdoomsbadcompany.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/shadowrun-fronteinsatz-status/

Note that the cover is just a mock-up, they will probably do something about that black bar at the bottom. Content-wise we are promised "some corrections", the inclusion of MilSpec Tech (a tradition started with SM and Digial Grimoire), and an exclusive AGS addon with information about the Bundeswehr, MET2000 and Argus.


And English speakers are more or less expected to get the genus wrong in German, just like the stereotypical Russian omits articles

Posted by: CanRay Mar 9 2011, 10:36 PM

Tradition?

And if they were male, they'd be gay? All that docking and everything.

Let's get back to 6WA and /dev/grrl bashing before I start getting bashed by gays. Drag Queens fight dirty!

Posted by: Fatum Mar 9 2011, 10:45 PM

That's because the English an articles make no the sense.
And the rules for when you need them are super-nonintuitive.

Also, I believe "gender" is the proper term for "Geschlecht", "genus" is "Gattung".

Posted by: Sengir Mar 9 2011, 11:01 PM

D'oh, you're right...and what can be more intuitive than making boys and men male, girls neuter and women female?

Posted by: Fatum Mar 9 2011, 11:04 PM

Well, if you think about it, it makes a certain amount of sense.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 9 2011, 11:07 PM

I'm slowly, but surely, picking up Japanese. Spoken Japanese. I haven't even tried to learn it written yet, because there is a lot of kanji to learn. I'd at one point wanted to join a fantranslation group and become like, internet famous, but alas...

Anyway, to get back to the topic at hand, I would love to have some of the foreign material out there published. Yes, I know a lot of it is crap, but it also covers parts of the setting that we over here in America haven't seen a lot of. Specifically, I'm thinking of the Paris material apparently in the French release of Corporate Enclaves (right?), the Shockwaves! adventure that Germany had that exposed Proteus (yes, I'm aware that there's a summary on the Shadowrun website; I'd like the whole thing, thanks), the material on the SOX, and then some of the Japanese releases. I know, I'm weird.

I know there's a sort of translation on Die .6 Welt out there, and I'm trying to hunt it down now to link to for you folks.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 9 2011, 11:07 PM

Ah ha, ha ha, double post.

Posted by: Link Mar 10 2011, 05:19 AM

But [US] English lets you use words like "super-nonintuitive" ;)

I'd never heard of dev/grrl ? but reminds me of why I lament the cultural influences of the present www on SR's matrix, probably from about the time of Matrix in SR3.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 10 2011, 05:38 AM

She's the "New Kid" on the JackPoint whose reason for being is severely in question. I've used the term "Eternal September" a few times... Often in reference to "everyone" being in the Matrix in the '70s, and a few other issues.

September was often a bad time for Usenet, as a lot of new students would find themselves with an e-mail address and access to Usenet for the first time ever. And it'd be up to the "Old Folks" on the Internet to teach them the early forms of Netiquette and such. In 1993, when Internet services started becoming available to people frequently and giving people access to Usenet as part of their services (Remember when AOL would keep sending you disks in the mail? If not, go to sleep! It's past your bedtime!), and the influx of newbies from all about the place, some of whom were quite unprepared to even contemplate that there were different codes of conduct to be found in this new place, not to mention a newly available anonymous ability to post and not be connected to yourself which gave some people feelings of power. Yeah, things went downhill fast.

The "Old Hat" of Usenet called it "The Eternal September" or "The September That Never Ended". Some say it's ended now that Usenet isn't used much any more by major ISPs, but, well, I figure it's just moved on.

I, and likely a number of old Deckers who remember their Matrix History, are likely to dub the creation and dispersion of the Wireless Matrix as a "Second Eternal September".

If /dev/grrl is supposed to be a prime example of that, then she does a damned good job. If she's supposed to be taken seriously, well... Give the character over to me for a few stories. By the time I'm done with her, she'll either be sobbing next to me in my corner when my Tech Support days come back to me, or she'll be as cynical and crotchety as the rest of the folks on JackPoint. She might even survive with some Girlishness intact. But that Unicorn Icon of hers will have some Serrated Steel Teeth and the horn will have Spikes on it.

Posted by: Fatum Mar 10 2011, 06:40 PM

No, not really.
In fact, strapping super- onto a word is hardly a unique feature of English, which can't be found anywhere else.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 10 2011, 06:58 PM

But you can combine multiple words into German to make Voltron!

Like "Maschinengewehrkraftwagen"!

Posted by: Nath Mar 10 2011, 07:41 PM

French authors added a full chapter on Marseille in Runner Havens French release. Corporate Enclaves included Manhattan, the only new material being a few pages on Lille. Paris hasnt been fully covered since the old France sourcebook in 1997.

Posted by: Fatum Mar 10 2011, 07:52 PM

I remember some German here (sorry, don't remember who exactly, I have terrible memory for names, unlike faces) complaining that we furreigners are doing it wrong.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 10 2011, 08:02 PM

That's the actual name for a WWII military vehicle class. Apparently, it means something like "Machine Gun Truck" or some such. So this would be a case of Germans doing it wrong if it's wrong.

Posted by: Stahlseele Mar 10 2011, 08:03 PM

I don't think i have seen the Maschinengewehrkraftwagen anywhere yet . .
And i have enough buddies in our armed forces to make up my own mercenary unit of specialists . .
We'd just be a bit thin on the grunts i'm afraid . .
But yes, you CAN do some pretty silly stuff in german. Behold: Galvatron . . err, no, wrong text . .
Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftcapitänsmützenpoliturdosenhalterschraube
rough translation:
screw for holder of a cup of polish for the hat of a captain of the danube steam ship company.
Yes, it's basically a one sentence word. It's a whole sentence in one word.

Also: Yes, our Books are superior! *snickers* ^^

Posted by: CanRay Mar 10 2011, 08:05 PM

German Superliterature laughs at your lack of syllables!

Oh, and I got it from http://www.achtungpanzer.com/maschinengewehrkraftwagen-kfz13.htm.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 11 2011, 01:16 AM

This is why I love Dumpshock. No lie.

Posted by: Megu Mar 11 2011, 04:30 AM

Linguistics grad student here. If you think German's bad, you ain't seen nothin'.

Check out Western Greenlandic Inuktitut.

Aliikusersuillammassuaanerartassagaluarpaalli.
aliiku-sersu-i-llammas-sua-a-nerar-ta-ssa-galuar-paal-li
entertainment-provide-SEMITRANS-one.good.at-COP-say.that-REP-FUT-sure.but-3.PL.SUBJ/3SG.OBJ-but
'However, they will say that he is a great entertainer, but ...'

Or Classical Ainu.

Usaopuspe aejajkotujmasiramsujpa.
usa-opuspe a-e-jaj-ko-tujma-si-ram-suj-pa
various-rumors 1-APL-REFL-far-REFL-heart-sway-ITER
'I keep swaying my heart afar and toward myself over various rumors.' (i.e., I wonder about various rumors.)
(Shibatani 1990: 72)

This is why I do SE Asian languages. We don't have none of this morphological bullshit.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 11 2011, 04:38 AM

Or Welsh.

...

Let's not go there.

Posted by: Megu Mar 11 2011, 05:56 AM

Welsh phonology is as scary or scarier than the morphology if you ask me.

Posted by: Critias Mar 11 2011, 06:15 AM

Rhy hwyr.

(Too late!)

Posted by: phlapjack77 Mar 11 2011, 06:18 AM

that looks enough like something from cthulu to give me the willies

Posted by: ggodo Mar 11 2011, 06:33 AM

And this is what it sounds like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV8d9ParDis


edited for link fail

Posted by: Saint Sithney Mar 11 2011, 07:49 AM

You guys are looking at /dev/ all wrong.

Just pretend she is a year-old metasapient AI housed in a clone body. That's what I choose to believe, and my world is instantly better for doing so..

Posted by: Grinder Mar 11 2011, 08:26 AM

Dude.
1. Use Google.
2. Read the first two or three entries popping up about "Maschinengewehrkraftwagen".
3. Think.
4. Now, and only now, post a reply to this thread.

Posted by: Stahlseele Mar 11 2011, 08:58 AM

That's pre WW2.
And i said i have never SEEN OR HEARD about that yet.

Posted by: Grinder Mar 11 2011, 09:14 AM

Exactly. No surprise that you've never seen one in action, hm?

Posted by: CanRay Mar 11 2011, 05:24 PM

I always get stuck at this part. I try, but nothing happens.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Mar 11 2011, 05:39 PM

Hmmm, could this t be due to a dropbear encounter?

(PS:Is there a dropbear emoticon?)

Posted by: CanRay Mar 11 2011, 05:40 PM

Never had an encounter with GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!!!

Posted by: Grinder Mar 11 2011, 08:24 PM

Posted by: hermit Mar 11 2011, 10:12 PM

Heh.

Also, my favourite ('favourite') part of the Almanac is the part where your favourite writes a school work on Deus.

Seriously, that is so wrong on so many, many levels ...

Posted by: ggodo Mar 12 2011, 06:57 AM

Ok, what section is that in? I think I need to read that.

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 08:37 AM

Page 83, "Corporate Downfall", her shadowtalk.

Posted by: MYST1C Mar 12 2011, 08:47 AM

I postet a complete rundown of the book's contents http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=10831&hl= back when it was released.

Posted by: ggodo Mar 12 2011, 08:51 AM

Ah, I thought she'd written the Corporate Downfall section. That's much less entertainingly bad. Though I do think it's funny she wrote a paper on it. Not like anyone makes it out of the Arcology alive. At least, it looks like the scariest adventure ever from a lethality perspective. That thing is deadly, and I'm not overly familiar with 3e.

Posted by: MYST1C Mar 12 2011, 08:53 AM

A German version is in the works. It will include the MilSpecTech e-book as additional content (just as the German Street Magic re-release includes Digital Grimoire and the German Corporate Enclaves includes Manhattan).
Some of the original contents will be replaced by new stuff - there won't be any of the racist crap (Auschwitz, gypsies) in the German version!

Posted by: ggodo Mar 12 2011, 09:04 AM

Anyone else feel like the Shadowtalk and the articles in 6WA were written by people who never shared notes or communicated? The maintext will be on one thing, and the shadowtalk will all be on some totally different subject like it was the subject of the article. It's really confusing. The Year of The Comet blurb is a few eyewitness accounts of Ghostwalker and the rift, and the shadowtalk is all about the probe attempts by various corps to shoot the comet. In the Corporate Downfall section the blurb is about voodooels and the shadowtalk is about /dev/grrrrl's homework and Slamm-O name-dropping Dumpshock. None of which relate in any way. Who designed this?

Posted by: Mäx Mar 12 2011, 09:42 AM

Their not commenting the article, their commenting the year in question and the big think for runners that year was the probe race of the corps.

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 10:25 AM

It certasinly is and even if you make it out, running with it like you are supposed to, the PCs are dead.

what's so amusing is that this little note nullifies the entire premise of Emergence. Which is that nobody knows AI are real and they enter the world stage as something new and exciting, as opposed to the Matrix equivalent of a nuclear meltdown. Going with that in mind - that school children write essays on Deus - this is like a worldwide pro nuclear power movement inspired by the Tschernobyl meltdown (and, probably, Fukushima). Not very plausible at all.

Posted by: Sengir Mar 12 2011, 01:21 PM

Just a quick follow-up, http://www.foren.pegasus.de/foren/index.php?/topic/5811-fronteinsatz/

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 12 2011, 01:41 PM

Damn you Germans for getting better coverwork (and writing!) than us Merkins!

Posted by: Fatum Mar 12 2011, 02:24 PM

A lot of people making it out of the Arcology alive and suffering related stress disorders is canon.
Actually, the whole Network arc is based on that.

They're = they are. Their = belonging to them.

Well, by 2072 the world at large knows about AIs, minding that there have been citizenship applications and related media fuss, and that.
Whether the general public knows about Deus is another question altogether; but what one megacorp knows, soon makes it into the rumors

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 03:10 PM

10%, making the Arcology incident still a catastrophe as large as 2004's Christmas Tsunami. The death toll is next to the same. The death toll for Tschernobyl (official) is not a tenth of that. Just to keep in mind how catastrophic this was. And with deus' being behind this known, all the fuzzywuzzy acceptance of AI as exciting, new and cuddly is just highly unplausible.


Since a bloody school child knows, it's hardly Top Secret. And she not only heared vague rumors,s he read the entire Arcology sourcebook. And wrote an essay on it. And published it on her corp school network. And nothing happened to her.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Mar 12 2011, 03:35 PM

Most people treat children with a lot of patience, especially when it appears that they have such a vivid imagination. Just because she wrote it does not make it true. And lets not forget, the facts are in the Shadows, not in the mainstream. /dev/grrl/ is a Shadow person, not a simple child.

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 03:36 PM

You very obviously have zero experience with how totalitarian systems work.


Have you even read the shadowtalk in question?

Posted by: Fatum Mar 12 2011, 03:49 PM

Yeah, it was a disaster, and yeah, I agree wholeheartedly that the world being accepting towards the AIs and the technos makes no sense. Putting it short, I'm with Clockwork on this one.
My point was - there were survivors, unlike what ggodo thought.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 12 2011, 04:03 PM

There's patience, and there's "That's a bit too close to the truth, let's take her out to the Space Camp where we can re-educate her into being a space cadet. And everyone else in her class will be jealous of her rather than thinking it's a bad thing!"

Also, she's a Simple Shadow Child. Honestly, I keep expecting to read about how she was turned into a bullet sponge and Butch complaining about the number of times she's had to get fixed up in a way that won't have the schools crying out about child abuse on her parents.

I wish I was more reliable in my writing (Just found out where that issue comes from, BTW, so that might be changing soon!), I'd give her a few stories that'll change her outlook on life a fair bit and at least use a damned DataSearch Program before opening her http://fromtheshadowsrpg.blogspot.com/2007/08/advertisement-soypie.html Hole!

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 04:08 PM

Agree on all you wrote. I had the same feeling, regarding Clockwork, reading Emergence.


Actually, see her parents separated and posted on (separate)= installations in the butt of the world (and remarried, forcedly) with the kid being given to a good corp family for re-neducation is a good bet. It's what they did with mouthy children in the East back in the day.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Mar 12 2011, 04:09 PM

Ummm, You would be wrong...

And Yes, I have...

The fact remains, /dev/grrl is a Shadow talker, therefore she is not a "Normal Person" in the typical sense. She has access to information that the normal person does not. Normal people look at those kinds of people like they are a bit touched, and move along. She is in the Shadows, which sets her apart, regardless of whether you like that or not.

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 04:13 PM

The Obama administration does not count.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Mar 12 2011, 04:15 PM

I agree...

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 04:19 PM

Seriously, you cannot just blather about state secrets in such societies, that WILL come back and bite you. Look at what happens to critical bloggers in China, Iran, Arabia, or what happened to people who merely read a western news magazine (once) in the Eastern Block. Corps are not militant free speech american organisations (Save maybe for Horizon, bzut THAT thing never made sense anyway).

Her teacher would lose his job. Her parents would be either downsized or lose any chance at promotion. She might be given over to 'better parents' the second someone finds her snooping in Shadowland.

Either Deus and the entire Renraku Arcology Shutdown are open info, or /dev/grrl should have been punished (probably indirectly, but so what). She wasn't so it can't be classified in any way.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 12 2011, 04:22 PM

I was feeling his way to thinking as well... Right up to the point where he sold out one of his own contacts for money. Then I agreed with everyone else on the JackPoint.

"I have to go punch a Clock."


I have no issues with a Corp Kid being in the Shadows, nor even her being a Hacker (Makes better sense than some kind of Combat Monster! A Rigger might also be possible. Some people just have a natural knack for things, but some things require training and body size/weight/magic.).

The issues I have with her are that she's pretty much the poster child for "DERP!" of the Shadows. Which usually are people that do not live long. Like that guy that bragged that he got one over on S-K and was found dead, like, two days later. Her character is heavily 2D, and not very well thought out in a lot of ways. Is this an issue of how she was created, how she was described, or the authors, I'm not sure, but the rest of the characters seem to be more "Real" than she does.

Of course, I'm pretty heavy into character backstory, even if it's not talked about. The amount of information I use to tease people I know about Jon "Money" Johnson's background is staggering, like exactly which building was dropped on him, to where he grew up, to even who his Father is and why they hate each other so much. Even the fact that his sister is a Nun doing Missionary Work in Africa, which is outright stated in one story, often surprises people.

And then there's the whole chapter on Nas' history. And that doesn't even touch on his family or upbringing.

Maybe I'm just elitist about character development being something that you don't do from the start, but have from before the character hits text.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Mar 12 2011, 04:23 PM

But it is not a STATE secret. It is knowledge that permeates the Shadows. /dev/grrl is not the only one who knows such things, so it is not a big problem that she talks about it. Those in the know won't take action because to do so would lend legitimacy to her claims. They just undermine her by ridiculing her. Happens all the time. Just because the information/knowledge is out there does not mean that the average Joe buys into the hype. The are conspiracy theorist everywhere, and look how they are treated. They are seen as a Joke. Same thing here.

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 04:45 PM

That's not mutually exclusive. Try writing about the Jasmin revolution, or the fact that stuxnet virus and an assassination campaign appear to have killed the national totally non military nuclear weapons energy program in an Iranian blog. That's information that permeates the western media and yet it is heavily repressed in Iran. Or try to cover street protests in China. Try to cover the war in Libya in Gaddafi areas! Just because *someone* knows something does not mean nobody wants to reptress that information. You see, secrets come in layers. Nothing ever is an absolute secret.


You really have no idea how such a system works for those on the inside. Google Doublethink. It's essential to live in a repressive society (or hell, in being a catholic; everybody knew about child abuse in ireland and elsewhere, but nobody talked because of social pressure on those who do). And because of that they would come down on her hard so everybody knows there are questions not meant to be asked.


That's pretty much limited to countries withessentially censorship-free media, where anything CAN be reported, and where the state is in no position to intimidate the population into doublethink. In a repressive society, Joe would know to not talk, ask about or even think about this, because /dev/grrrl did and look what happened to her.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 12 2011, 04:56 PM

Well, with the application of Social Networking and such that the Wireless Matrix has, you have a lack of censorship (It's hard to put a genie back in a bottle), but heavy monitoring. So, yeah, the info will get out, then lots of evidence (Real, faked, or otherwise) will be provided to prove just how wrong or "Fictional" the event is.

Also, it makes "Disappearing" people harder and easier at the same time. In one way, more people are going to notice if "John-117" disappears. In another, who the hell was "John-117"?

Edit: The scariest thing I showed my group was from my News Reports that I wrote between games. One of them had a communications satellite disappear. And any news reports on it were squashed. And I'm talking official ones from NASA (A wholly owned Subsidiary of Ares Macrotechnology!) and major media outlets, and Shadow BBSes themselves! They kind of freaked a little bit, especially when they found it.

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 05:06 PM

Beg to differ. Social networks are censorable, especially if corp propaganda will coax you into the corp network (because that's where all your corp brat buddies are). If you disappear they will be told you moved away/had kawaru visit you/other random bullshit. It's how China treats the Web, with success. And no newspaper, no blogger and no friendlist will save you.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 12 2011, 05:08 PM

Depends on the friendslist.

Certainly got Netcat out of trouble.

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 05:19 PM

Netcat's not a cop citizen living on corp ground.

Posted by: Fatum Mar 12 2011, 05:26 PM

uh, same thing that happened to Samizdat prohibited literature printers?
As in - nothing, nobody gave a damn?

Is said contact Netcat, a techno?

Following in this post is a list of countries with free, objective and not (self-)censored media.
Now, let's not go this way any further, and not discuss RL politics.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 12 2011, 05:31 PM

She was in Corp hands... Heavily armed Corp Hands at that.

Posted by: hermit Mar 12 2011, 05:48 PM

Huh. It was common practice in East Germany to blacklist people who read Der Spiegel or watch West German TV for jobs, so that they would not find employment, and for several other niceties. Sure, they were not carted off to Bauzen to have a sitting in front of the Cobalt lamps but it was certainly repression. Doesn't always have to be a gulag.


Yup. I'd probably not turn my back on the guy then, but I'd never anyhow; however, it wasn't nice bot nothing I'd stone him for either.


*s* Yeah, sure, let's not go there (never meant self censorship though, but top-down censorship).


That's not the same.

Posted by: ggodo Mar 12 2011, 06:03 PM

I was talking about the PCs. That adventure is deathtrap difficulty.

Posted by: Angelone Mar 13 2011, 01:19 PM

I miss the arc runs They were a nice change of pace from the usual sneak in sneak out. It was like Aliens as opposed to Oceans 11.

"Game over man! Game Over!"

Posted by: Troyminator Mar 13 2011, 02:18 PM

Getting back to SWA, I really liked it. I don't have years of experience with ShadowRun. I've not read all the books in all the editions, nor even read any of the novels. I've played one or two adventures/missions in 2nd edition, maybe one adventure in 3rd, and fell in love with the system. Being able to read SWA and get a broad overview og why the world is the way it is was very useful for me.

As for /dev/grrl, her questions are my questions, just that I'm male, talk differently, and don't wear pink fingernail polish. Also, as stated earlier, I don't have extensive knowledge of the world/system, so she is who she is. I don't know any better.

Posted by: Ascalaphus Mar 13 2011, 02:42 PM

I thought the random texts from the year in question were a very nice part of 6WA actually. But then as a history student I tend to like "sources from back then"

I thought that (huge editing mistakes aside), the history section was much more interesting than the country section; those were all too short to be really useful.

Personally, I never really minded the /dev/grrl thing, but it didn't stand out as particularly nice either.

Posted by: ggodo Mar 14 2011, 12:37 AM

I liked the random shadowtalk for getting a broader view on the year than just the blurb and timeline, but some of them felt like coming into half of a conversation. There's quite a few that seem like there was another shadowtalker that got slashed in editing, but no one picked out the response.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 14 2011, 12:53 AM

I always saw that as the SysOps trimming files for size occasionally. But, then, I rationalize a lot in my head.

Posted by: ggodo Mar 14 2011, 01:16 AM

This is my new operating theory.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 14 2011, 02:46 AM

But again, my issue was that the articles provided often didn't seem to have a thing to do with the time in question. Here we'd be talking about the Nightwraith strike...but they'd be talking about some politician or something that I hadn't heard of until that point. And I've been reading Shadowrun since early in the 2e days!

Which is fine, as long as some sort of hint is put in the text somewhere. I'd end up relying on the shadowtalk to pick up on what that was, but a few times I had to go to the Sixth World Wiki to even get what year it was. IMO, it was just terribly laid out.

I've pretty much laid out my problems with /d/; not that she's young, or a girl, or acts feminine, it's that there's no justification for a character with her level of ignorance posting on Jackpoint. If they wanted a noob window, I'll repeat again, use a previously established character like GnuB, who gives you the double-shot of being an idiot and being someone from older books for nerds like me to go, "yay, GnuB's back!"

Posted by: Fatum Mar 14 2011, 03:35 AM

Beg your pardon, who's GnuB? Where has he been used? Haven't seen him (although I've seen a bunch of different noobs and one-time shadowtalkers in the books...).

Posted by: KarmaInferno Mar 14 2011, 05:13 AM

I personally don't have a problem with "clueless" characters. They're great to justify exposition, after all.

However, they need to either wise up over time or get dead right quick. Shadowrunning is not a kind nor forgiving business.

And then get replaced by new clueless characters.



-k

Posted by: Critias Mar 14 2011, 05:25 AM

Which is, to an extent, what's happened. Slamm-0!, for instance, used to be the village idiot (the brash young decker who was almost as good as he thought he was), maturity-wise...but time's passed and things change. He's still younger than most of the rest of the JP crowd, but someone else had to fill the "actual youngster" nook. So we got /dev/.

Posted by: Saint Sithney Mar 14 2011, 07:23 AM

We'll always have Chicago...



Like I said, a young AI is a better fit for a clueless noob with the kind of power and perspective that would offer something to Jackpoint...

Posted by: Critias Mar 14 2011, 07:40 AM

Oh, I'm not arguing, trust me. I'm not a huge /dev/ fan, myself, but writing with inherited characters is part of a freelancer's lot in life. I'm just making a guess as to what the motivation was for her initially being added to the group.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 14 2011, 11:03 AM

He's all over 3e material. For instance, in Year of the Comet he talks a lot in the Ibn Isa chapter.

Posted by: Angelone Mar 14 2011, 03:27 PM

I personally like /dev/ better than GnuB, but to each their own I suppose.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Mar 14 2011, 06:12 PM

Indeed...

Posted by: CanRay Mar 14 2011, 10:07 PM

I keep saying, hand her character concept over to me. I'll fix those problems right quick.

And, really, no one could figure out who was on John-117s friendslist, and just how much support he'd get?

Posted by: Bira Mar 16 2011, 01:21 AM

I like /dev/grrl mostly because I think her online handle is cute. I don't care that much about most of the shadowtalker's bios except when they might be useful in game (which hasn't happened yet).

As for the the Sixth World almanac, I think it was OK, though not great. The Amazonia writeup could have been better (Super-Sayajin Jesus? Really?).

Posted by: Brazilian_Shinobi Mar 16 2011, 03:04 AM

I didn't understand the super-sayajin jesus part.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 16 2011, 03:14 AM

Pop-Culture Reference. They age badly.

Then again, the Hacker in my group threw a Pokeball and called out, "I choose you, Optimus Prime!" when he engaged his Attack Program.

Posted by: CynthiaCM Mar 16 2011, 10:03 AM

I was the primary writer of /d/ in the "In Their Face" section of Attitude, so I would very much like to step in and give my thoughts on the character.

I certainly understand people's low opinion of /d/ even though my opinion differs greatly. I, personally, find myself really getting behind her. Her fiction piece in Unwired is what sold me on the character, as she proved that she really isn't some clueless nitwit who can't pull her load. Yes, she's girly. Yes, she seems out of her element. And, yes, her youth makes her seem very alien to most readers. All these factors are just "on the surface". Beneath her naivety and youthful exuberance lies a competent hacker; a youth who can be a girly-girl and still get the job done. Not all Shadowrunners need to be cut from the same "bad-ass" cloth.

Another point has been raised regarding whether or not she belongs on Jackpoint. I'll agree that perhaps she's a bit too inexperienced to have been invited, but it's just one of those things. Hell, we've had folks in the White House who weren't necessarily qualified to be in office (Georgie, I'm looking at you, pal)... but they reached that lofty position nonetheless. So, then, why is it so hard to accept the fact that /d/ was invited to be on the 'Point? Weird things happen.

When writing /dev/grrl, I tried to show that she's still very much a teenager but at the same time, she has grown some. You'll find that, at times, she attempts to be more professional, even though her youth still makes its way to the forefront frequently. Ideally, she will continue maturing and we'll see her grow up before our eyes as the years progress. I think it will be a fun evolution to watch, as I have no doubt that sh has the potential to be an impacting character once she gets all the "whatev's" out of her system.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 16 2011, 11:25 AM

Y'know, and I'm not opposed to that. I don't want people thinking that I want the game run one way and only that way. I'm completely fine with a character coming into their own. It's just that at my first rub with her, I found myself skipping anything she had to say, because it was so balls-on oblivious and naive that it came off as, "why is this girl working in the shadows?".

I - again - would like to reiterate that I have no problem with characters of a non-badass nature talking on Jackpoint. It's just that her presence seemed out of left field in a gathering of hardcore mercenary types that have years of experience in the shadows of the Sixth World. If there'd been a piece wherein Fastjack brings her on and talks about her, fine, we get some character establishment. But in Almanac, it's just, "whoop, here's this little girl, now everyone hold her hands." It was just plain weird.

I'm honestly more afraid that people think that I'm stuck on I HATE GIRLY GIRLS GET THAT PINK OFF OF MY BOOKS IT BELONGS ON MOHAWKS. I have someone in my life - my wife - who is a girly-girl. I live in an apartment stuffed with plastic horses (not My Little Pony, but she has those too) next to my gaming books. Hell, I watched an episode of MLP last night with her (and if you haven't caught it? I'm being dead serious, do. It's hilarious.) But yet, she's the one playing the combat monster troll with soak up the WHOA and makes her living charging into groups of enemies and tossing them around like footballs every Saturday night. It's a really personal thing that I want girls of all stripes to get involved in the hobby, because maybe then we'll finally evolve to the point where she can walk into a gaming store and not feel like every eye is on her.

And if they can take /d/, and make her a part of that? I'd really appreciate it. I would cheer for the author who did that. The Sixth World is full of different people, and I'm happy for change. But I want change that feels organic, and that's why /d/ bothered me so much. "Here's a dumb cutey girl, have at!" is what it felt like. So I'm going to be a little critical, I apologize.

Posted by: Bira Mar 16 2011, 12:26 PM

Well, they had the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio constantly surrounded by a giant blazing purple aura. And they also had the Iguaçu falls double in size. As far as I know, they did this because Ancient History had written they hadn't changed before he left, and so they thought writing that they hadn't changed in the replacement text would be some sort of copyright violation. In other words, for no good reason. Even if it would have been somehow illegal to mention those landmarks and say they hadn't changed, simply not mentioning them would have been better than writing what they did, IMHO.

It's not just that it's unnecessarily over-the-top, but it also has no relevance to actual play whatsoever. Those things took up space that could have been used by elements PCs are more likely to get involved with.

Posted by: hermit Mar 16 2011, 02:18 PM

My friend's Antagonist shaman has Starscream for patron spirit.


Yeah, CGL has a sad tendency there. Attitude, though, looks notably better than Almanac and War so far, to be fair.


Yes, but seeing as how this is fiction (where cohesion is more important than in real life), a shared universe with a certain style and that everyone's right sick of moe anime girl hackers (after Bebob's Ed, it all went downhill IMO). Not saying that all runners must be the same, but prancing my little pony girlies are kind of ... unfit to stand what amounts to urban warfare when the shit hits the fan. As a remote hacker, fine (until someone traces her at least), but not on-site. If it's a facade, though, fair enough.


American politicans, like those in any democracy, are essentially exchangable talking heads that work the agendas of others. Democracy isn't the political system that often gives rise to great political leaders or even intends to. The ideal democratic politican is of average intelligence, empathic, skilled in choosing friends and delegating tasks to people who can do them and then tell them what to do, and have no scruples to make himself the puppet of others. Further, if it does allow a gifted, intelligent and sharp leader to rise, democracycalls them demagogues and populists and tries it's best to grind them down (like Obama, like Nixon, like Le Pen, like Berlusconi, like Chavez), with more or less success. That's not bad in itself, because strongman, talented and instpiring leaders are overrated anyway and usually only cause one mess after another with increasing time in office and increasing hubris and arrogance.

Shadowrunners, on the other hand, do not have the vast machinery of support personnel, lobbyists, and interests backing them that a politican does. Politicans need to be able to talk and sometimes choose between which interest to act on, which comes down to about the same competence trequired as for a news anchor. Shadowrunners are out for themselves in circumstances most politicans are totally unfit for and wouldn't last one job. You can't really compare that. Both are demanding jobs, but they have very, very different demands made.


Fastjack made other and even stranger choices to populate his little forum, like Puck, who was heavily implicated in the murder of a good friend of him, Captain Chaos. What is much more jarring is that none of the hard-ass types in Jackpoint call her out on her crap every once in a while, but treat them as a respected member of the Seattle runner community.


No offense to you, but that's already slightly annoying with Slamm-O and Netcat (my pet hate character anyway) and their happy family time. While evolution of 'talkers is nice, it doesn't have to be a sitcom.

Posted by: Sengir Mar 16 2011, 04:27 PM

There have always been shadowtalkers who don't fit the "professional" angle - Kane commits mass murder and acts of wanton destruction just to boost his herostratic fame, how professional is that?
And from experience I can say that girlishness and ballsy attitude can be two sides of the same coin


But what I do find annoying about /dev/g is her "I did a paper" thing, which blurs the line between "shadow knowledge" and popular knowledge.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 16 2011, 04:38 PM

Well, I have to say, she was right about proper attire while riding a skateboard. Shows at least some common sense.

And, after working Tech Support, I can personally tell you how rare a thing that is, despite the first part of it's name.

Posted by: Wesley Street Mar 16 2011, 07:26 PM

Oh, pish-posh, don't be such a hater. Ed made Cowboy BeBop even more enjoyable.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 16 2011, 07:45 PM

Yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this.

Hackers especially are going to run the vast gamut of races, genders, types, likes and dislikes. Look at hacking nowadays - no longer the purview of a bunch of nerds sitting in a computer lab chortling about sneaking into the NSA database, hackers nowadays range from /b/astards to Anonymous to script kiddies to an ex-military hacker working as a gray hat. That's not even going into the technical and IT fields, which are experiencing a growth in the female gender.

My favorite examples of what Sixth World hackers are like are shows like .Hack, Densha Otoko, and Megatokyo (I think ya'll have heard my argument on that one before, right?). You have to think about what iconography a person chooses says about that person. Yes, your hacker could find themselves on the wrong end of an MLP hoof in cyber-combat, because that's how that person chooses to identify themself!

I don't think my group would go anywhere without their main hacker Bug, a kid with AIPs with a penchant for flatvid game shows. He's just as effective remote as he is local.

Again, the argument isn't that it's wrong to have /d/ as a girly-girl; it's that one, she seemed to come out of nowhere, and two, there hasn't been anything to establish why FJ would give her membership. And if Cynthia or other authors get the chance to do that, I would be willing to give them the chance.

Posted by: LurkerOutThere Mar 16 2011, 08:15 PM

Well to be fair on the other end of the spectrum we have Sticks whose areas of expertise are: Bugs, the Mob, The Cops, Bounty Hunting, Prostitution and a few other things I'm undoubtedly forgetting to mention. You have netcat and Slamm-O both seeing entirely too much screen time. So yea there area lot of quirks about the Jackpointers that you are either going to love or you are going to hate.

Posted by: sabs Mar 16 2011, 08:19 PM

I would expect to see Heckers/Technomancers who spend most of their lives online, being prominent posters/commenters. Look at here, I bet you could name 6 people off the top of your head that post all the time, especially in specific sub forums.

Posted by: hermit Mar 16 2011, 08:49 PM

Sure, I am not saying women ought not to be hackers. Just that this kind of woman is unfit for a runner's life. I would be just as opposed to the dreamy-eyed, highly emotional and highly unable to cope with stress, emo kind of guy as a runner. A runner, not a hacker, who can feel totally uninvolved because she's continents away (until the hit team comes knocking at least).


Yah, and here we have to agree to disagree. I'd like them to be less on the otaku side, not more.


Definitly agree. But woth the umpteenth copy, it got lame.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 16 2011, 10:33 PM

That's because they're loudmouths who post a lot, even when they don't have much to say, and sometimes just make comical comments. IRL version, ME! SR earlier editions, The Laughing Man.

Posted by: hermit Mar 16 2011, 11:06 PM

Epic troll.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 17 2011, 02:06 AM

MT maybe I'll give you. But you should read the other two. Completely not what you think they are.

Posted by: hermit Mar 17 2011, 08:08 AM

Admittedly I only ever glanced them shortly. But the character list in MT includes a PS3 in the body of a sex doll, and the characters are so otaku they make Shinji Ikari look like a viable lifeform.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 17 2011, 11:01 AM

Yyyyyeah, you need to actually read the series I just recommended. If you think Ping is a sex-doll, then you did a really quick glance over

Posted by: Wesley Street Mar 17 2011, 12:35 PM

Deniable assets come in many shapes and sizes.

I agree with RM that /dev/grrl hasn't shown reason to be accepted onto Jackpoint. But at the same time you can't pigeon-hole every freelancer in the Sixth World as some killbot who never smiles because that would smudge his cybereyes which you can't see because he never takes off his mirrorshades and spirits forbid he ever take off his leather jacket even in bed with his hawt elf babe with the big hooters because that's the best kind of babe and... *pant pant pant*

I think it's time to take my medication now.

Posted by: Doc Chase Mar 17 2011, 02:05 PM

Ping was intended to be a date sim accessory - or a glorified sex doll. Just because she didn't doesn't mean that wasn't what she was meant for.

Posted by: CanRay Mar 17 2011, 02:39 PM

Hey, sex dolls can be useful. With the tinting on vehicle windows, you can duct tape one to a steering wheel and it'll look like there's someone driving something when it's really on Autopilot.

Posted by: hermit Mar 17 2011, 02:42 PM

Now where did I say that? But a certain inner strength and durability should go with it as much as a certain common sense and awareness. Girly-girly my little pony types have neither of those, often. If your life taught you everybody holds the door for you and everytime there is something unpleasant some guy comes pick it up for you if you scream, you are gonna die very fast in the kind of business shadowrunning is supposed to be. Yea, that means Paris Hilton wouldn'T make a good runner either. Or, for that matter, Jacko (RIP).

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 17 2011, 02:42 PM

*sigh*

She's a non-H model. It's spelled out explicitly several times. She will not take H-games. She barely had any subroutines for undressing in front of people for the longest time. Her purpose is to help draw otaku out of their shells and actually make them date real people.

Also, dating sims =/ h-games. This is the problem with people who hear about things only through off-hand references via Something Awful or Crackd or whatever. Dating sims are generally softcore at their worst, and usually have what "core" elements excised when they do manga / anime translations. I don't have the time to go into the differences, but yeah. Kagetenshi could explain more, or, when I get back tonight, I could dig up my old post on the differences between the two.

Posted by: Doc Chase Mar 17 2011, 03:19 PM

Glorified, RM. Glorified. Which she is, and you know it. Ping was getting into softcore actions when she was first introduced until some of the subroutines kicked in, like throwing the lot of them out of the apartment while she got ready for school.

I know very well that dating sims =/= H-games. That still doesn't change that she's an accessory for the purpose of romance.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Mar 17 2011, 06:34 PM

It's not really that most don't "get it".

Most just don't care.

It all gets filed under the mental category of "Weird Japanese Stuff".



-k

Posted by: CanRay Mar 17 2011, 06:42 PM

There's stuff from Japan that isn't weird?

Posted by: hermit Mar 17 2011, 08:25 PM

Tamago is pretty mundane scrambled egg with soy sauce, like every omelette in Hawaii I ever ate.

Posted by: Stahlseele Mar 18 2011, 12:44 AM

Well, i can't think of anything right off the bat . .
"Photoshop or japan" has it's reasons for existing.

Posted by: ravensmuse Mar 18 2011, 12:07 PM

"She's an accessory for the purpose of romance" =/ "sexbot". Again: Ping doesn't have the subroutines for sex. End of story. She can get more comfortable with her users, yes. She can become what that user desires in a woman, yes. But in order to be a "sexbot", she actually, y'know, has to have sex with them.

Considering that her primary descendants are Chii from Chobits and Ruri from Nadeisco, neither of which were sexbots (though I'll give you that there were sexbots in Chobits, Chii wasn't one of them) and that she's in the comic as a means of exploring what it means to have your own thoughts and feelings when you're not supposed to (something familiar to the transhumanity vibe of SR4) I don't think writing her off as a "sexbot" does it justice.

Ech. Just spent half an hour searching for my H-games post from last year. I'll find it, but not today, apparently.

Posted by: KarmaInferno Mar 18 2011, 09:46 PM

I'm pretty sure a lot of folks tend to classify any robot that's designed of ANY sort of 'human' relationship (as opposed to, say, manufacturing or utility or combat) as a "sexbot", even if it's TECHNICALLY the wrong nomenclature.

As ai said, most simply don't care enough to bother with those fine distinctions. Another smaller percentage of that group finds the whole idea weird and creepy.

I find it more amusing, honestly, when fans of a particular subject get all upset and bothered when an outsider gets the terminology wrong.

http://s-ak.buzzfed.com/static/imagebuzz/terminal01/2010/12/15/11/how-to-piss-off-nerds-2484-1292428969-7.jpg and totally miss the joke. Often goes hand in hand with http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FanMyopia.



-k

Posted by: Doc Chase Mar 18 2011, 09:52 PM

ALARM ALARM TVTROPES LINK

YOU WILL LOSE YOUR LIFE

Posted by: Stahlseele Mar 18 2011, 09:53 PM

Thx, Dr., i allmost clicked on that link, if i had not read your warning . . and i don't have time right now!

Posted by: Doc Chase Mar 18 2011, 09:54 PM

I know what you mean. I'm out of here in five minutes, and I almost clicked on it.

Posted by: Fatum Mar 18 2011, 11:47 PM

All that fuss instead of writing a single line in the hosts file.

Posted by: Aaron May 1 2011, 07:34 PM

No offense taken. I work with genius teenagers, and you write what you know, so I pitched her to Rob, and she was in.

Anyway, she's hardly "my" character any more. I wrote her with the intention of letting other writers have their way with her (so to speak). I've always envisioned her as starting out full of energy and optimism, and sliding into a very gritty and broken reality. Whether she does that without noticing (like Edmund), or violently (like O-Ren Ishii), or tragically (like Mercutio), or some other way is up to those who write her. She might get a real coming-of-age story, or sudden death. I personally think it's cool that I don't know. Hopefully, it'll be interesting.

(By the bye, that's a reference to 4chan's hentai forum, right?)

Posted by: CanRay May 1 2011, 08:47 PM

I still say hand her over to me for a bit and she'll be a force to be respected.

Or in a corner gibbering madly.

Possibly both.

Posted by: redwulf25 May 1 2011, 09:25 PM

Speaking of which I once made a hacker that had burned out on too many L337 M4573R BTL's. They used a Renta-zilla for their attack program and kept hallucinating a small hamster.

Posted by: ravensmuse May 1 2011, 10:04 PM

And if that was your intent, cool. Given that I actually enjoyed her more in Attitude!, I guess whoever wrote her sections got it.

Now I'm curious to see what they do with her.


4chan's alternative hentai forum


Largo is a technomancer. There. I said it. Everything he's seeing - zombie attacks, Rent-A-Zilla, crazed fanboys - is him interacting with the Matrix.

Posted by: Mäx May 1 2011, 11:39 PM

I just read all of her comment in the almanac and i just can't figure out where you got this impression.

Posted by: Wakshaani May 15 2011, 06:09 AM

On Dev, there are a handful of "Why is she here?" storylines that could work.

1) Someone's GF. It's a demeaning thing for a character, but, "Bob's GF wants to hang out with us" is a mantra in many places. Someone called in a big favor to get her on the boards and everyone else puts up with it.

2) Someone's relative (Niece, daughter, etc) ... Not *quite* as bad, but still demeaning. Could be a Legacy (Hachetman's kid always has a place, etc)

3) Legit That Good. This one seems to not have much traction due to her comments and seemingly being a bit over her head.

4) "What does this button do?" accidental joiner. She just tripped into Jackpoint and they figured they could accept her or kill her. Unlikely, obviously.

5) The Long Con. She's being brought in by someone who needs a mole in her corporation (Shiawase, isn't it?) and will be betrayed. (Unlikely, obviously.)

6) "I'm a teenaged girl, tee hee!" Dev is, in fact, Louie the Plumber, 120 KG worth of unwashed New Yorker who pretends to be a teenaged girl online. FUNNY, but unlikely.

7) Lastly, "The Jubilee", which is the one I expect. Someone (Probably Fastjack himself) is on a run, something goes wrong, they go down from a bullet, stumble away, and wind up being found by Dev, who hides them from the corporate security team and nurses him back to health. While he recovers, they chat a bit and she brings him her deck, which is clearly modified. It's not the greatest of work (She's a fifteen year old corp kid) but it shows potential and a willingness to go outside the lines. She takes a risk later on, distracting the guards to get him out of there, and, a week later, she gets a gift in the mail ... a fully kitted-out deck, a handful of personalized programs, and an invite to Jackpoint. "You got potential kid. You're no, well ... ME ... but you have potential. I owe you a big one, so, get ready to be a protege."

This lets her be a decent hacker, but not a GREAT one, explains how she gets access to such an elite area, and why no one's talked about kicking her out ... they might bitch about her here and there, but she's Fastjack's personal project, so everyone shuts up and deals with it. She's proven that he can trust her, even if her talent isn't up on everyone else's level yet.

That's the one I'd go with, but, you know ... told way better.

Posted by: Mäx May 15 2011, 10:17 AM

It's somekind of combination of these 3, she really is pretty good hacker and knows stuff about many subjects the rest of the jackpoint crew aren't so well versed.
And she also know many of the members personally, whether or not she's related to any of them remains to be seen.

I have never gotten the impression that she's not a top notch hacker, most of the stuff she doesn't know about seem to be specific happenings of sixth world history, witch isn't surprising considering she's a teenage corp kid.

Posted by: Aaron May 15 2011, 01:04 PM

Good point: we haven't seen a lot of her run fu, at least not directly. Has anyone done a search to see what evidence can be collected on her Jackpoint-worthiness? I'm talking stuff she's actually done, not what information provided, which she might have gotten first-hand or might have just looked up.

All I can think of off the top of my head is planning a run in her head (Unwired) and digging cyberware out of some dead dude. Anybody else?

Posted by: CanRay May 15 2011, 03:26 PM

We haven't seen enough of her in the fiction yet. She might be a good hacker, she might be a braggart, she might be a protege for FastJack as he's starting to feel old...

Hell, who knows at this point?

Posted by: Floyd May 15 2011, 06:58 PM

I would hate to step on any toes here, or hurt feelings. And I don't means this as an attack, just as an observation.

The OP (RM) has many times stated that he does not dislike the traits of the dev-grrrl, but wishes they would have used an already established character or someone whose style he is more comfortable with. This suggest to me that the OP's largest concern is that she is new, representing new ideas and posibly a new face to something he has spent very long getting to know. The authors have chosen to continue to use this character, in their own way, to possible express where the hobby has progressed to or hopes to where it is going.

The OP also talks about the entries in the book to be substnadard to previous additions, suggesting a cut-paste would be a better idea. Not the best, but better. This again harkens back to what is familiar. The change may exist to add things to the past that the authors meant to be there or altering continuity to get over the past, our time, catching up to the present, Shadowrun time.

These are mere suggestions, but the pattern seems to fit, especially with such polarized opinions and a huge page count on the post in total. Now where the sex-robit talk fits in, I cannot say.

Posted by: Stahlseele May 15 2011, 07:13 PM

Fast Jack Feels Old, but he knows how to rationalize it away in his fight aainst the second crash worm . .

Posted by: Fortinbras May 15 2011, 09:11 PM

I used her as the kidnapped girl in the Emergence adventure seed Realm Beyond and found that she had a lot of neat uses for storytelling. She's perfect for exposition and to show how someone can seem aloof and uninterested in the flesh and blood, but when communicating through text can be a treasure trove of information. The theme needed to show how immersible the Matrix can be and she helped out with that.
Two of my players are teenage girls and another two have teenage children, so it was fun to see how they interacted with the character.

On the run, however, my group had no end to the uses for a 15 year old hacker. From seeming non-threatening for infiltration to running logistics to finding social media connections. When I put her in the run I honestly thought she would just be dead weight for an escort mission, but everyone got a lot of mileage out of her. Before the run I was totally in the camp that /dev/grrl was some kind of little Anakin Skywalker exposition tool, but I was genuinely surprised at how useful a character she was in the campaign.

While there is relatively little fiction or allusion to any of her runs, I would imagine she'd end up the Kitty Pride or Jubilee of Shadowrun.

Posted by: warrior_allanon May 15 2011, 09:15 PM

I happen to be an MT fan as well, so bad in fact that i brought the groups "Endgames" characters into my 3.5ed "Ebberon" campaign. Not to mention that i'm already working on bringing the whole crew into the SR universe, or else sending the author/artist a crossover story for one of his "Omake Theater" spreads. That said, heres the IMPORTANT comics that refer to Ping.

http://megatokyo.com/strip/1172
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1173
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1174
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1175


personally since I think i've got the bugs worked out of Miho, I think i'm gonna do Ping next, but she's gonna have to have the restricted gear quality so that she can have the Otomo drone for a body

Posted by: ravensmuse May 15 2011, 09:30 PM

I don't know if it was here in this thread or another thread, but I have laid out before that Megatokyo takes place in the Sixth World. I mean, think about it.

Largo: complete unaware of the fact that he's Emerged. His plot centers around the technomancer and AI community that's sprung up in Tokyo.
Piro: Somehow managed to become best friends / lovers with the latest Horizon subsidary pop-superstar, now trying to help her fight the system.

And then you get into the magical girls, and Rent-A-Zilla, and the Sony Hitsquads...

Posted by: ravensmuse May 15 2011, 11:15 PM

K, cool. Also, you can just call me raven, or you can call me Al. But call me Dottie and you're dead.


We-ell, no. That's not exactly why I expressed an issue with /d/.

I'm all for change, and I'm all for moving things forward. I may have started reading Shadowrun back in the 2nd edition days, but I've finally gotten to play Shadowrun with 4e. As such, I'm actually pretty new to things, I just like shout-outs. Usually, as a manner of the universe in which the Sixth World exists, there exists enough of this to satisfy me and keep me relatively tame.

As I've said multiple times within this thread, I have absolutely no problem with the writers introducing new characters.. Nada. Bing. Zip.

What I do have a problem with is when those very same writers choose to introduce a character that doesn't jive with the established world.. Why is this girl here? Who introduced her? Who invited her in? Jackpoint is supposed to be a closed community with multiple vets to get in - yet, a girl who had to have someone explain some of the Sixth World history to her - history that, IIRC, isn't even that unknown, is invited in? Uh...

It's jarring. And it's kind of annoying. That's why I suggested that if they were looking to introduce a new character in which to provide a window of entry for new players for, they could use someone already pre-established in previous material. Using GnuB would be nothing more than a fun shout-out to a character that personally, I dig.

Now, I've since gone on to read Attitude, where other writers have utilized /d/. And I found that, despite her familiar writing style (she's a fifteen year old girl) I actually really dug her perspective on things. And, shock and awe, I actually thought her contributions were some of the best in the book.

Imagine that.

QUOTE

The OP also talks about the entries in the book to be substnadard to previous additions, suggesting a cut-paste would be a better idea. Not the best, but better. This again harkens back to what is familiar. The change may exist to add things to the past that the authors meant to be there or altering continuity to get over the past, our time, catching up to the present, Shadowrun time.

Eh, once again, kind of missing the point.

Sixth World Atlas has a good couple of things working against it. One is that it's a product with a very long development time. Originally it was meant to be part of the 20th Anniversary of Shadowrun and was supposed to be the American version of [b]Die .6 World; something I'm too willing to admit I have a crazy obsession with. That meant multiple cooks in the stew and all of the sundry things that can happen to that.

Secondly, it was hampered by a shift of management.

Thirdly, said management is currently a bunch of crooks and liars and are putting books out to say that they are putting books out, regardless of actual quality. War! and Attitude suffer this very same problem, to varying degrees.

I make no bones about how I feel about the current management of CGL. You can read my sig for further details.

This is not a problem of "everything new sucks! Everything previous was so much better!" This is an issue of, "your quality control sucks, and you need to get a handle on this shit because it's costing you money and fans!"

Again: While I started with Shadowrun in 2nd Edition, I didn't get to actually play Shadowrun until 4th Edition. There is no starry-eye'd idealism going on here - okay, maybe just a little, I'll admit - just someone with half-a-decent hand at writing and a proficiency for world lore going, "seriously? This is your triumphant return from disaster?"


The grognard card? Seriously?


Geeks hate geeks in other genres, news at eleven.

Posted by: Fatum May 16 2011, 12:13 AM

Oh, apropos to annoying characters - FastJack was extremely annoying in The Way of the Adept with his reprimands. There's hardly a character a bad writer can't spoil.

Posted by: CanRay May 16 2011, 04:45 AM

Well, back when I was in school, my English Teacher tried to show us that there weren't any bad characters, only bad writing.

She was wrong.

Posted by: IKerensky May 16 2011, 06:54 AM

And what if /dev/ is just too true to be true ?

She is definitely not believable as she was like someone that try to hard to impersonnate some character. She's supposed to be new and cute and ignorant but everyone online seems to know and respect her enough to provide her information. And she has information to provide that other are unaware of.

So for me several pov (not necessiraly how she is in RL but how she is in my SR) :

1- She is an sentient AI evolved from an Hello Kitty meet Barbie agenda notebook for Schoolgirls, that is why other hacker seems to respect her and why she has such a special way to socially interract. That is just part of her communication, like if she was a foreigner from girly-land with girlish as her native language.

2- She is a well known Shadowrunner impersonnating her. But in this case, why is no one calling on the bluff ? perhaps that is because it was an hacker that got several neural damage after a run but still possess considerable skills, just suffer from mental delusion and is convinced to be a 15 yrs old girl. Confronting him/her could result in a total breakdown and Jackpoint is protecting his/her.

3- She is overacting, but that is not really a trouble in a world where some people dress as clown or harlequin, some look like a giant turtle or have purple electrical mohawk. Perhaps the overracting could get on the nerves but I think the hackers in VR are used to impersonnate extreme avatars with outlandish personnality. And the reason why the people answer her rather than tell her to *off and read the interdweeb is because they play along as the main use of shadowland is to share information and build a database for everyone in the shadow to use. And some of the shadowrunners could really need some Global World Situation and Common Knowledge 101 (like every child prodigies from the Barrens or Orks Samouraïs that manage to reach international status).

Posted by: Mäx May 16 2011, 07:50 AM

Because you ofcource know everysingle think of the fifth world history for the last 100 years, right.
Also that kind of history knowledge has no relevance what so ever for someones runner skills.

Posted by: Grinder May 16 2011, 10:50 AM

Wikipedia, anyone?

Posted by: ravensmuse May 16 2011, 10:54 AM

No, but I do know how to use a search engine. So should she, if she's half the hacker she's supposed to be.


Yup, I agree. But what it does do is make you ask the question - if she's so shit-hot a hacker she can hang out on Jackpoint, why is she having someone hand-hold her through a basic history lesson? It's not that hard.

Posted by: ravensmuse May 16 2011, 10:55 AM

Damn you Grinder.

Posted by: IKerensky May 16 2011, 11:28 AM

Because Wikipedia doesnt exist in Shadowrun as the idea of an user filled internet database sound just that much dumb and useless a few years ago. It was clear the only true information could only be received from shadownet chat rooms. (does Shadownet have forums ?).

Wich isn't totally unlogical. I cant see Wikipedia or something as global as that exist in the 6th World, every major corporation would have its own version of it and devote a large amount of time to manipulate the informations avaliables on publics areas.

Remember than in SR information is power, and verificated informations, regardless of the exact subject is priceless.

Doesnt sound too dumb to ask to informed people "Hey, what really happened in years 2013, my corpo teach me that, and the matrix told me that, but what was really happening ?"

Posted by: Ascalaphus May 16 2011, 11:33 AM

Of course, there's S-K's Aetherpedia. That's been pointed to as an actual big encyclopedia-style Matrix resource. But it seems like that kind of thing is rare: the Matrix 1.0 wasn't as free-for-all as our Internet. Even the Matrix 2.0 seems to be heavily corporate-run, with very little user-created things. Although it's hard to come up with good reasons for that, because the everyone-can-hack style of M2.0 should make it very easy.

Posted by: Mäx May 16 2011, 11:51 AM

You still haven't pointed out which commentsw from her in the Almanact brought out all this hate you have on her.
Because i really only found one question she asked where she might have just used the search engine to get the answer, but really if i was hanging out with people who no the event their referring to, i most likely would also just ask them instead of bothering to google it.

Posted by: Brazilian_Shinobi May 16 2011, 12:08 PM

You can hack, doesn't mean you will survive the IC later.

Posted by: Ascalaphus May 16 2011, 02:26 PM

IC doesn't do much to a blogger in AR.

There doesn't really seem to be much holding people back from participating in the Matrix. Any commlink will do as a server for a Node, and generic basic programs aren't too expensive either. Connectivity is also trivial.

Posted by: CanRay May 16 2011, 04:04 PM

Because the history classes and lessons she's gotten so far in life came from a very corporate slant.

She is a child of John and Jane Q. Wageslave after all. This is how she learns what is *REALLY* going on.

From a certain point of view, as Obi put it.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 16 2011, 04:19 PM

And really, you can't argue that point all that much. Many Corporate Wageslaves are born, brought up, educated, work for, and die within a single Megacorporation, without ever receiving any point of view but the party line. Makes complete sense to me.

Posted by: Fatum May 16 2011, 04:58 PM

Really, not knowing the history of at least the AAAs makes for some really grim career opportunities for a fledging runner. Makes this much harder to tell when your J's about to cross you.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 16 2011, 05:10 PM

Which is why /devgrl is asking these types of questions.

Posted by: Fatum May 16 2011, 06:15 PM

Not being able to find the answers for the type of questions she's asking herself is even worse :ь

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein May 16 2011, 06:18 PM

Is it not possible that the answers she has found are ALSO SLANTED to the Corps POV? Gee, that would never happen. Who better to ask than the Top Tier Shadowrunners that she is now hanging out with?

Posted by: Sengir May 16 2011, 07:33 PM

Exactly, that's the whole point of Jackpoint: You may be a herostratic mass murderer or attempt to sell a member of the community for vivisection, if you are able and willing to share useful info that's fine.


So there's nothing wrong with having a tee-hee-teeny girl on the site. But a character whose main act is "excuse me mister, what's a Predator?" just doesn't make sense unless there is somebody powerful who takes her under the wing...and since Jackpoint is no Waldolf school, I'd expect some heated exchanges in that case.

Posted by: Mäx May 16 2011, 07:36 PM

Could you give a page ref where this info of her not knowing AAA:s history can be found?

Also a page ref for queestions even remptely like this would be nice, if it exists?

Posted by: Eimi May 17 2011, 08:15 AM

They don't. It's hyperbole.

She was actually quite tolerable, in my opinion, as I finally got around to reading my copy. She asks questions largely about somewhat obscure events, or events that are so different from what a child growing up in a corp in the 60s would ever experience that they're downright alien to her, so she asks how the people involved could handle them.

She mostly just offends people due to her lack of social graces, more than her ignorance (in text, that is...), and while she is the most common "huh?" character in the text, she isn't the only one, and isn't there for every question.

Considering the way public schooling has been taken out back and shot in general in Shadowrun, and doubly so for corp schools' versions of history, her ignorance on certain events is QUITE plausible. And as for the Deus thing, I imagine that she isn't working for Renraku; perhaps her corp makes sure to point out how foolish and ignorant their competition is at any available moment? And we don't know WHEN she wrote the report...it could well be after AI existence has become more "the latest hot thing" and less "whatthefuuuuuuck" in the public sphere.

Not to mention, we don't actually know how ACCURATE her report on the arcology shutdown and the events inside and behind it were. For all we know, it was rather radically different than the reality.

The only real issue with her would be the "why was she invited onto Jackpoint" thing, and that's pretty easily answerable with "because Jack invited her, and the ways of Jack are mysterious and unfathomable". If anyone got too strident with their questioning of it on the board, the mod(jack)hammer might have come down on them. We don't know.

I know this much: I find her way more tolerable than Mr. Drake Sunglassesandkatanasatnight. Let's not bring up SR's history of outstanding canon character creation.

Posted by: Blade May 17 2011, 08:25 AM

We actually don't know exactly how/why exactly people are invited to Jackpoint. It could just be because they live in the Shadows and have a foot fetish (according to the latest books).

Posted by: ggodo May 17 2011, 08:42 AM

I don't want to play Footrun. . .

Posted by: ravensmuse May 17 2011, 10:42 AM

I don't remember. I don't own the book, so I can't look it up.

What I do remember is that it was in the history section, and someone says something to the effect of, "remember? This is what I was explaining to you last week." It was so head-pattingly condescending I balked.


In the end, does it really matter? It's the impression I took away from a character. Apparently, others did as well. It's not some rule that you can then dissect in its minutae and then present to me knowingly, saying, "empirically, you're wrong." It was a feeling I got from a character that apparently the writer didn't have a handle on.

I again state that I did not find her annoying at all in Attitude, and actually found her section at the end more interesting than most of the rest of the book. She reminded me of some friends I had when I ran a chatroom on dA, right down to the horrible misspellings.

This whole "SHOW ME WHERE IN THE BOOK YOU FOUND THIS" is a little http://youtu.be/Q_JNuIN33Wk for my tastes, thanks.

Posted by: Aaron May 17 2011, 10:54 AM

One of the first things I teach my students is to look things up. Teenagers have had a (teenage) lifetime of dependence on adults, so much so that their first instinct is to ask questions. Adults then either teach them to look stuff up themselves in good sources, look stuff up in bad sources (like skewed Sixth-World corp-sponsored online "encyclopedias"), or just shut up.

You http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29875907/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/teen-hacker-turns-cyber-crime-consultant/http://www.pcworld.com/article/143045/teen_hacker_accused_of_unleashing_20_million_botnet.htmlhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/19/dshocker_pleads_guilty/http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-217587.htmlhttp://articles.cnn.com/1999-08-26/tech/9908_26_t_t_teen.hacker_1_hacker-computer-whiz-nsas?_s=PM:TECHhttp://www.smh.com.au/technology/security/australian-teen-triggers-global-twitter-scare-20100922-15ln7.htmlhttp://minnesotaindependent.com/81476/high-schooler-challenges-bachmann-to-debate-on-u-s-constitutionhttp://www.livescience.com/14138-teen-cystic-fibrosis-drug-cocktail-contest.html.

Posted by: Mäx May 17 2011, 06:02 PM

You meant this one, after the article talking about Japanese soldiers evicting metahumans from their home in San Fran:
"Remember that conversation we had the other day grrl? I told you never trust
the Japanese.
> Butch
> Yeah, I thought you were making that up. They actually evicted people and gave
their homes and belongings to the soldiers? That’s nuts.
> /dev/grrl"

While the wording is much different, it does give me a totally different kind of image then the wording you used, witch i have to admit would have made facepalm to grrl.


Well if those thinks actually where in the game, it would have made me much better to understand where you guys where coming from and migh have made me even agree with you.

Posted by: CanRay May 17 2011, 10:30 PM

That harkens back to her Corporate Upbringing, especially if she's from one of the JapanaCorps. Brain Washing from birth is hard to get away from.

Just ask someone in the US how likely they'd vote for the Communist Party.

Posted by: redwulf25 May 18 2011, 02:01 AM

I have in the past when I've seen them on the ballet, but then I lean towards anarchocomunist.

Posted by: CanRay May 18 2011, 02:06 AM

OK, rephrase: Ask a selection of random people in the US what they think of Communism.

I bet one will be: "THE ONLY GOOD COMMUNIST IS A DEAD COMMUNIST!" and various other quotes that might come out of Liberty Prime.

Posted by: Bigity May 18 2011, 02:27 AM

Communism - great on paper, absolutely horrible in practice.


And yes, kill dem red bastards!

Posted by: Grinder May 18 2011, 02:53 AM

4. Discussion of politics, religion, and sex are prohibited, except as they directly pertain to Shadowrun or another game. Discussions on these subjects will be watched closely, and any innapropriate posts may result in warnings or suspensions.

Just a reminder before this gets out of hand.

Posted by: Fortinbras May 18 2011, 03:15 AM

Despotic rule by dragons. Terrible on paper. Worse in practice.

All hail Lofwyr!

Posted by: LurkerOutThere May 18 2011, 09:45 AM

Well it's working out pretty good for old golden snout.

Posted by: Brazilian_Shinobi May 18 2011, 12:49 PM

For him? Sure! For the little monkeys under him? I guess many physicians would consider them suffering from Cronicle Stress Syndrome

Posted by: CanRay May 18 2011, 03:27 PM

*Sighs* Fine, I'll be good.

Posted by: ggodo May 18 2011, 03:38 PM

My last runner team signed on with S-K. The Golden Oldie sent them to the moon to deal with a Dissonant Technomancr trying to set up a sprite haven. The hacker ended up unprotected in VR with the Techno behind him in meat sending the drones from S-K's Orichalcum mines to kill him. The Hacker kills Insane Wolf, the Dissonant's Paragon, logs off to find his buddies KO'd, the Techno they'd though was a civilian the whole run standing over the other civvy's body with a knife. He then defaults on Unarmed combat to hit the Techno with the shock hands he thought were cool, but was too lazy to learn to use. Edge lets him punch through wound penalties and the Techno goes down. The rest of the team arrives, breaks the drones for good measure, turns the corner to see the hacker barely standing, still holding the Techno by his face. "Where were you guys!?"

I think that worked out ok for them. In other news, the firehose drone? Killer.