Very strong point. Something I may begin using in future runs. "Your team is a group of neo-anarchists. Break into house X, trash the place, spraypaint it, and grab item Y." Not quite as cool as when they really believe it, but at least it's a push in the right direction.




QFT, kudos to the new guy. You're absolutely right. There's no space for a bright pink mohawk because a mohawk would be spotted from half a mile away and the Star would follow it specifically. Now you need to keep a low profile, because we, the GMs, have enforced it. Food for thought. Makes me (depressingly) have to reconsider my entire GMing style...

There's plenty of punk to be found in the muted, low key style. You're not part of "the machine". You're living in the cracks of society, pretending to be "part of the machine". Every time your decoy commlink gets bombarded with the spam so your real one doesn't, and you get to walk down the street without seeing Horizon's latest mind control campaign, you're given "the system" the proverbial middle finger. Every time you skew a targetted marketing system because you keep buying the same type of coffee with a different fake SIN, you're "sticking it to the man".

The shooting war for the soul of humanity is over, and the neo-anarchists and the cyberpunks lost. Now, the holdouts are trying to see how long they can stick to their principles and keep not doing what they're told. The pink mohawks are gone, discarded like the uniforms of a defeated army, but the warriors who wore them are still fighting. They do the corporations' dirty work because it's all they know how to do, but they're still outlaws, living outside of normal society, doing everything they can to avoid becoming part of normal society.

Its good to have these discussions form time to time - helps put things in perspective.

Speaking from my own experience...

When we played back in SR1 and SR2, we really put the punk in it. Runner groups looked like mobile freak shows and the GMs let us get away with just about anything because, well... why not?

Toward the end of SR2 - when we were burning out on the game - there was a player driven shift to play more professional characters. Ex-Corp pros became the norm. A couple were even on the official payroll, not-so secretly doing shadow work on the side. This was mostly due to a desire to do something different.

For the most part, my entire circle of gamer friends missed the entirely of SR3. We didn't give it a try until after SR4 was out. I always thought the tone of that edition was particularly dark. If nothing else, going from Laubenstein's bright water color archetype portraits (which I love even to this day) to the very dark portraits in SR3 set a certain darker tone. Some peopel in the group I breifly ran did the punk thing, some went more professional - its was about a 50/50 split.

And SR4 has just continued the darkness in a lot of ways. Heck, look at the BBB. All that green screams "The Matrix" (as in, the movie) to me. The portraits are still dark. By canon, there is constant video surveillance in all but the dodgiest part of the town, which makes walking down the street with your manic panic pink 'hawk not a good survival trait. Anyway, my current group seems to be leaning toward the professional side, rather than the punk side. Its not black ops, but its definitely a cut or two above street.

Ramble, ramble... yeah.

-paws
Yeah, that was pretty much stream of thought. Sorry.

In my games there is a mixture of the two worlds. In the downtown (more "civilized") areas of town it's all about subtlety and professionalism where if the runners makes too much "noise" they're going to get LS or Corp Security on their heads in a moment. However, out in the barrens and other "fringe" parts of town (like Tacoma in Seattle) there is still a strong "gang punk" movement going. Shootings in the street from patched together car wrecks and firebombing with molotov cocktails is still the norm.

Of course, canon doesn't really state what hairstyles are common in 2072. It could be that bright pink mohawks are rather common among wageslaves and even exec, while only SINless trash have what we of 2009 consider 'conservative' hairstyles.

heck, it could be "in" to be pink mohawk while the real social drop outs try to rebel now by being "conformistic"

Despite R. Talsorian's insistence, cyberpunk never had a thing to do with with the punk movement or punk rock.

If my Face and the Troll Bodyguard have anything to do about it in the near future, coupled with the strong organized crime bent of Denver, Film Noir is probably the best genre descriptor (with a little James Bond mixed in if I can ever afford my vehicle mods (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ) for our current game.

And we have a relatively interesting mix actually. We've got:

• a true Ex-Corper (the combat medic)
• a "raised in the slums trying to make a better life" corper wannabe (the bodyguard)
• a club kid adrenaline junkie (the gunbunny)
• an insane but useful homeless guy (the B&E adept)
• a upper-middle class dropout who went on a disappointing mystical quest and is tired of being broke (the Face)

I agree with the earlier poster who mentioned the players getting older. I know that when I was in high school playing Shadowrun, our group was often full of crazy, wacky ideas that were very impractical, but our GM let us get away with it anyway. Mainly because we were young and took the game a lot less seriously. I don't think the flavor of the game has changed drastically, but I think older gamers approach it differently.

If you guys want to play it that way, I'm game. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)


-paws
I'll follow up with you in PM.

Another thing occurred to me last night (yes, I seem to do most of my thinking in bed - blame my 21 month old daughter (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ) - in both SR2 and SR3 Shadowrun Companion(s) they had a Flaw listed - Distinctive Style. Basically, if you wanted to be one of the green mohawk (as the books describe it) guys, it was considered a flaw, and you got extra BP for it; this seems to make this kind of appearance the exception rather than the norm.

Distincitive Style is very subjective. In many areas of the Barrens, the guy that wears corp-approved attrire and sports a clean-cut professional look is the one that deserves Distinctive Style while the mohawk crowd might blend far more easily.

I always viewed the Flaw as being like a Talisman Geas for distinctiveness - minimum of 3 distinct characteristics, so it'd have to be a green mohawk, a Soviet armour jacket and a pearl handle Ruger Superwarkawk, for example...

Says who? Contrary to popular belief, Cyberpunk didn't begin with Case and Molly either.

Maybe one reason that the setting has moved away from "punk" is that our pop culture today has done the same thing. When you think about it, this game was created when punk was still very popular and that was translated into the game. Now considering what's gone on recently in current events and pop culture, that has been sub-consciously transferred into the game setting.

Just a thought.....

Bruce Bethke.

That's not how I see "Distinctive Style" functioning. I see it less as an indication of what you wear, and more of a nebulous quality that makes you memorable as an individual.

You can meet a lot of people who might all belong to the same sub-culture, wearing similar clothing and hairstyles, but there's that one guy or girl that just stands out amongst the rest.

Whether they wear a suit, dress like hippies or wear nothing but a cowboy hat and a diaper, something about them just sticks in people's minds.

At least that's how I see that quality working.






Actually, that's a great example of the breadth of the genre however.

You've got Case, who's an extremely talented train wreck. You've got Molly, who's a pure professional (and my favorite type of Street Samurai, effectively a melee glass cannon), and probably represents what most of this thread is about as she is the type of slick, precise, yet not corporate owned type of pro that the OP sees the game has switched towards.

But outside of all that, you have your seriously fringe anarchists, like the Panther Moderns.

So they all exist, simultaneously, in this massive pastiche.


Nothing says you can't play neo-anarchist rebels (or terrorists, depending on your POV), but you can't really squeeze characters like that into the typical Mr. J offers job, team does job, crap ensues, team gets paid or gets played model. And it's hard to theme a game around reckless lunatics with pink mohawks who don't want to follow any rules or take hand outs from "the man".

I think this has more to do with the "disappearance" of punk than anything. A younger person playing Shadowrun today just doesn't identify with the leathers, chains, and mohawk style anymore. I do love the character they were going for in the original Seattle sourcebook, but in many ways when I look back at it now I just think: "it's the 80's." I'm interested to see the upcoming Seattle 2072 project for a more updated book that has the same feel.

Also, your average RPG player often has the shy and introverted nerd-type personality (hey, I'm one of those !). He feels a lot more comfortable with the idea of a black coat than with a pink mohawk, as far as identifying with your character matters.

And that was true even in the early 90ies (Punky Brewster does not count !)

Wasn't she an Otaku? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)

Like I said, it's very subjective. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Nice topic.

I also felt the setting was getting less punk with each edition. Maybe thats why I disliked 4th so much. (except anniversary edition, this one I like). SR 1st and 2nd Ed were more like Neuromancer, Blade Runner, Akira, Strange Days movie, etc. And nowadays it is kind of Ghost in the Shell, Bourne Identity, Matrix, Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, etc.

But its a natural thing to happen, I think.

Even if im a huge fan of old 2nd ed and its great punk aesthetics (kudos to that ed art director, Jeff Laubenstein), I think the game must adapt to the new times. The cyberpunk genre had this huge appeal in the late 80 ´s till mid 90 ´s but after that It kind of lost the charm. if the game didnt adapt to new times and trends it would lose appeal with the new generation of players.

If that kind of atmosphere is what you're going for, I can't agree enough with the folks suggesting that you play in LA. We've got an LA campaign going right now, and the vibe you're describing is pervasive. It's not just about being an efficient or inefficient criminal anymore. You've got to worry about the security of your regular identities, the image of your primary runner identities, the the rep of your alternate identities if you take non-public jobs occasionally, and the lines you hope nobody draws between them. If you're trying to get famous, you've got to figure out your gimmick and hit the big time while the window's open. If you want to keep it quiet and professional -- or, alternately, if you want to take a stand against the system -- you still have to worry about your image, because if you aren't managing it, as your street cred builds, the people you run against will start manipulating it for you. You have to play the game, but you also don't want to play it too well, lest you turn into another group of disposable "runners of the week."

To give an example, our running team started out doing Jackass-style "stupid human tricks" sims as a sideline to build buzz. Over time, they've evolved into Michel Gondry-style absurdist works that mix real, dangerous runs with outlandish drama (like when we stole armored diving suits and used them to film a fight sequence against a pit fighter in a shark suit in a high school gym decorated "Under the Sea" prom-style). A complete accident on a random-short-term job (we were hired to keep a band from performing, so we contacted their agent and turned it into a planned "kidnapping" publicity stunt) won us a higher-profile, higher-paying job as "heels" fighting a well-konwn runner squad. Now we're struggling with the issue of whether we can milk our new role long enough to get the money and rep we need to put us in a bigger league and let us do a face turn. At the same time, those of us who came from street backgrounds (about half) have to deal with the psychological impact of turning violence and theft into art, while the eggheads in the group worry about whether it's still art once the branding execs get a hold of it.

Stories like Neuromancer (and the sprawl Trilogy in general) and Blade Runner gave birth to stuff like Ghost in the Shell and the Matrix.

There's very little in the way of "punk" in the main characters of those stories, with more of them being "pros" than anything else (Molly, Turner, Deckard, etc.). So the setting never really changed, not in popular fiction anyway.

You know, I was thinking, and I realized that a big part of the shift is the whole not jsut more professional attitude seen in SR, but also the rather noticable lack of people doing crazier things. I mean, when is the last time you read in a book that the character carried a baseball bat, and was in a melee, using it as a weapon, when someone threw a grenade and he hit it back at the thrower? That is kind of punk.

What about the sort of everyone is hitting the facility in a chaotic fashion, but, when you step back and look at it after the fact, you realize that the hit is actually leaving a sort of charred graffiti of some sort in the facility. That is sort of punk.

One of the problems, though, is: what defines Punk?