I'd shut the whole thread down, at least for a while, if this shit continues.

I don't have time for Bigotry but including the characters mentioned is classic B movie schtick. Early you said something about B movie campaigns, and well I think this blatant sexual inclusion fits into B movie. See the Fragging cover of the book.

Pandering to 14 year old boys is not allowed in "serious bizness". Though for those of us who do love the B movie side, I appreciate the eye candy.

Kruger, don't call me a bigot simply because I use a keyword. Your other arguments and positions are much better thought out and this is beneath them.

BlueMax

I'm trolling? I made an argument that was solid and has yet to be refuted. You guys are trolling, not me.

I'm going to let you in on something. Five people have agreed on lots of things and been wrong. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) And actually, people have agreed with me, . All I've ever said was that the Rocker didn't fit the game's concept of a shadowrunner, and that as a result, it was removed from the list of archetypes. It's impossible to argue against that, no matter how hard you guys have tried. Unless someone can explain why the rocker archetype and game concept disappeared after 1992 and was never mentioned again, it's somewhat pointless to try and tell me I'm wrong.

By all means, continue to peg me as a min/maxer, or whatever else you want. It probably makes it easier for you by demonizing me as some kind of negative gamer type. In the end, you'd probably count yourselves grateful if you were privileged enough to play in one of my campaigns since story and characterization are something I feel is important above everything else. Well, unless you wanted to play a Rocker. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Agreed. I apologize for that.

If I remember, that book wasn't very good either. However, being lesbians didn't automatically make them unprofessional or pink mohawk. I mean, at least it gave homosexual characters a positive representation in the genre.

But let's be fair to FASA and ROC. They weren't pandering to fourteen year old boys. They were pandering to sexually frustrated mid teens to early twenties types who play role-playing games. And mediocre writing is a staple of RPG license novels. I mean, look at R.A. Salvatore. He's been writing bad books for twenty years.

Your last paragraph is pure win, as its accuracy is impeccable.

The book was "good" for its type. If your intent is to aim at that target market and sell books, then the Terminus Experiment was a win.

But good for B Movie, is still B movie. I think some Shadowrun is B movie. Not all of it by any stretch of the imagination, but some of it.

Topic for all the other Pink Mohawk threads: Is Pink Mohawk B movie?

BlueMax

And this is where I don't ever talk to you again (baring an apology). Because frankly, I am a professional, I have a nice house, great family, nice car, make buckets of money, went to a great school, all kinds of blessings. I am truly a fortunate man. Yet you continue to insult people and not even read your own comments. I'm out.

If I had to choose one of the SR rule sets, I'd probably go with SR4A. However, my real preference is using GURPS with the Shadowrun setting. I pick and choose from the setting to fit my current campaign.

I had the chance to read some 1e supplements recently, and I think I know what people mean when they say the flavor was different. I didn't see it as "more serious" or "more dystopic" than the one in SR4, though. The Sprawl Sites plot hooks were written with tongue so firmly in cheek that it probably caused a nasty face wound on the author. I mean, yeah, it's a dark future, but it's hilariously dark. SR1 is a cyberpunk dystopia in the same sense that Evil Dead 3 is a horror movie. All the trappings are there, but the intended effect was something else entirely.

My guess is people only started thinking Shadowrun was Serious Business later on. I like both ways of viewing it, and I don't think either of them is inferior to the other.

Well, ok, staying sceptical is what you are supposed to do i guess . .

There are two types of Shaodowrunners presented in the game up to even 4e. Roles and backgrounds.

Roles=Street Sam, Mage, Decker
Backgrounds= Tribesman, Gang Member, and Rocker.(only gang member from the original group exists, though bounty hunter, private eye etc are similar to this, though they come packaged with a role as well)

Rockers disappeared in 2e not because they no longer fit a shadowrunning team via the background method of shadowrun entry but because rockers went out of style. SR 1 was the time of the big rock bands, where being rebels and against the man was the main image of many of the bands. SR2 was more the era of grunge bands and whinny emo punks, the rebel against society rock band idea had died down quite a bit.

Basically every reason why a "Rocker" supposedly does not fit for shadowtunning you can say the same thing for Gang Member, bounty hunter, and PI. Yes they have useful tools for a shadowrunning team just like how a rocker provided face type skills to a team. But a bounty hunter hunts bounties, he doesn't go on runs, a PI has a fogged glass door on an office that says Something or other PI, he has a hot secretary and an alcohol problem, he does not go on runs and make extractions etc. A rocker is a band member, they fight the man via music if they don't sell out. They do not go on runs. All of these guys are more contacts than shadowrunners. But one large premise of shadowrun is you are X dude who isn't a shadowrunner, but you get pushed into running via circumstances of your life. Your skill set isn't shadowunner role X it is whatever your last profession was and you will find a way to make those skills work in the shadows, some backgrounds make this easier than others. Heck one reason not to include the rocker is a rocker is basically the face with the artisan skill at 4+ there would be way too much overlap.

Shadowrun is a game about being awesome.

Being a rocker is awesome (almost wrote 'rocket' - also awesome). People like playing rockers. People like playing explosive, loud characters with guitars who get lots of tang. Also awesome.

Ergo, including the rocker as an archetype makes sense. It's what people want to play. So far six people have pointed out that the Rocket is awesome and enjoy playing the rocker in their campaigns. That's cool, include the rocker. Just like how some people say they don't like deckers in their campaigns for whatever reason, that's their choice, but it doesn't mean deckers don't belong - it's just some people emphasize different aspects of the game.

Just so you know...
I've played black trenchcoat, ganger, pink mohawk, stone cold pros, mercs, novices, drug runners and all sorts of other campaigns. Yes, in some of those a rocker makes no sense. But in several of them a rocker fits in perfectly - and unlike the investigator archetype (still in in SR3), the rocker actually rocks.

Now I will give you, much like the Face archetype, the rocker's special characteristics are useless 90% of the time - and that should be addressed. In the face's case, you normally double up with a second job (like mage, since they're both int/cha based). You can do the same with the rocker. Alternatively, you can change the rules to make the rocker more useful in combat. Wounded Ronin's special combat maneuvers do this very well. I haven't had a chance to use them, but they increase the fun of the rocker by a magnitude of 2, at least. If only he could do the same with deckers.

Could you excise the rocker from the game? Obviously yes. But that doesn't mean the rocker is 'useless' - it just means he's a specialty character. You don't take a rigger on an astral quest or a decker into the jungle, nor a rocker on an infiltration job. But that doesn't mean any of those archetypes don't belong to the game, or aren't awesome to play.

I don't buy it. Musicians will always be in style, and grunge rockers were incredibly anti-everything conventional. If anything the rise of grunge and the fall of hair bands would have made the Rocker an even more relevant character to players, needing only a slight revamp of fluff and a new character portrait to make them more edgy.

Face =/= Rocker. Face: Negotiation, Etiquette, Languages. (1e/2e compatible skills) Rocker: Etiquette (Street & Media). Half the archetypes had Etiquette (Street). That didn't make them Faces. Sure, you could easily make a Face with the guitar skill, but the concept behind the two isn't even remotely similar.

A Detective may look like a niche character, but if you look at his skillset in 2e, he was good at infiltration and surveillance (Stealth 6), well connected (Corp:3 and Street: 4 with 6 contacts), and a reasonably good fighter, even if he was going to be slow next to a street sam. Pigeonholing them as 1930s film noir-esque characters is just a sign of thinking one dimensionally. While the archetype was probably not often played simply because it wasn't glamorous enough for the typical cyber/fantasy game, it achieved the three basics: Fits the genre. Capable protagonist. Playable skills and gear for a shadowrunner. In a lot of ways, the Face is a closer descendant of this archetype. In fact, if you look at the Face vs the Investigator of SR3, they're essentially the same character, one cybered and one not.

And the Bounty Hunter or Bodyguard is just a street samurai with a different background hook. Certainly personal extractions and recovery as well as close protection are all staples of the Shadowrun world. Without a doubt the Bodyguard of 2e was on par with the samurai archetype. And the "Street samurai" was always such a nebulous term. Even the 1e description conveyed that bodyguards, hired muscle, and other generic street soldier types were all street samurai.

90% of the game is about legwork and interaction. The fighty bits should add tension and drama. If anything, 90% of the time, a street samurai's guns and wired reflexes would be useless, lol.

I'll agree that the Face is going to be typically blended with another archetype, but if anything the Face is almost integral to the game. It was one of those archetype concepts that didn't come around (officially) until SR3, but should have always been there.

But we're still missing the entire point. It was never that you shouldn't ever play a Rocker. It was never that there are no game types where the Rocker is appropriate. It was that the Rocker of 1e, based on the game 1e was trying to portray, was a stupid character concept and showed that at the time FASA hadn't quite nailed down the game concept. I'm really having a hard time figuring out why some of you are so confused by this. Endless posts about how this or that Rocker character was fun in your campaign is irrelevant. I have no idea what your character was like, or what play style your group had. And frankly, I don't care. I'm only commenting on the 1e archetype, the evolution of the game's core concept, and why the Rocker didn't fit in and was thus eliminated.

Kruger,
If we are going to talk about what FASA wanted for Shadowrun Characters, I will say this
Shadowrun was advertised as a game without classes.

Thus, any character is equally valid using the "FASA wanted" ruler.

BlueMax

Because what you are presenting as fact is really just speculation. Unless you where on the design team you can not know why they changed what they changed. Your opinion is not invalid, it just happens to be only an opinion. Tom Dowd posts here at DS (Though not very often.) He would be a person who could speak with authority on this subject.

I both agree and disagree with you though, in what I think to be your point. The rocker was a poor archetype that made for a difficult to use PC, no doubting that. I just do not agree that archetypes have to fall into certain lines to be valid. Some people who wind up in the shadows really do have no business being there. Many of them get killed quickly and some seem to survive despite the odds or lack of relevant skills. In other words, being a poor archetype, or in your word "stupid" does not exclude i from being an archetype that can be used. I just doubt too many people did.

FASA wanted to sell books, lol.

FASA made Shadowrun 1e by mashing a bunch of popular things together. D&D with Cyberpunk. 1e included Rockers. FASA thought: "We should make a book for the Rocker characters and put in some stuff about other entertainment! People will buy that." Shadowbeat really wasn't a big seller. FASA saw that as "Nobody cares about Rockers and niche campaigns for them, they just want to play samurai and wizards. Maybe drive trucks or hack sweet futuristic computers. Let's just concentrate on our game about doing that."

As far as Shadowrun being a game without classes, that is true. However, 1e and 2e especially had very well defined roles, even if there was no level progression like D&D that forced you to be a Fighter, or a Thief, etc.. There's only so much blending you can do before a character is significantly weaker in his multi-roles than specialists are in their one. No archetype is invalid. But certainly the game wasn't designed to play "Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy" even though you could quite certainly make him if you wanted to and with a bored enough GM, run a campaign.

You just described Sam Verner. 'nuff said.

Which comes back full circle to something I already said:



Character survival is often as much a question of competency as it is of GM charity. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Obviously it isn't real life, but given the background material, and knowledge of how real world criminal elements work, it's not hard to put together what would happen to casual shadowrunners if the world of Shadowrun was "real" and not controlled by biased agents like GMs, lol.


I am puzzled though that you quoted the very section where I specifically notated that I wasn't saying the Rocker could never be a playable character, and yet you waste lines suggesting that I said the opposite.

Uh, sure, if Nick Burns had magical powers, a spiritual guide, and the tutelage of a competent spell caster. Nick Burns just provides desktop and network support and degrades people who aren't tech savvy. Kinda the same thing if by the same thing you mean things that are only linked by the flimsiest of circumstances. Kinda like the F-22 and a hang glider are the same thing.

I'd avoid using phrases like "'Nuff said in the future. It isn't working out for you.

I loved SR1 because it introduced me to the game and setting. Liked 2nd and loved 3rd for cleaning up some of what I didn't like about 2nd and it was what I'd spent the most time playing. I like what 4th tried to do by unifying the mechanics so there weren't 3 or 4 different rulesets you needed to learn in order to get the most out of the game in terms of variety. In short: 1<2<3=4... so far.

This post is far too on topic (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

I never suggested the opposite nor was trying to. I simply stated my opinion. If I suggested anything, it was that you are putting to narrow of a focus on what an archetype should be.

BTW, the above quote is to point out your blatant baiting.

What you are missing is that all of those things happened during the narrative. Sam did not start out that way. Just as an archetype is just the starting point for any character. All of those things could happen to Nick Burns.

And again with the baiting.

I never said otherwise. A face also isn't a decker.



Not sure how you define a 'game type'. However, I have played several campaigns and stand-alones where my rocker character was perfectly appropriate. You're going to have an awfully hard time making a proof that the rocker is never appropriate (although I'd be interested in seeing it).

I'll also say that I never played any of the pregen characters straight from the book, so if you're comparing solely on that (as you did earlier), that could be your problem.

In the end though, I see nothing in any of your posts which address the fundamental point in mine - rockers are fun to play. I don't really need a dedicated book to play rockers, but the archetype is a real hoot. Shadowrun is a game that most of us play for fun. That archetype increases how much I enjoy the game. Ergo, it belongs. I'm sorry you don't enjoy playing the rocker, but we aren't playing KugerRun, so that really isn't relevant to what is 'appropriate' to the system.

Stop crying about baiting when you so "blatantly" did it with me by suggesting I said things I didn't. I'm merely creating effective analogies to facilitate the transfer of the desired information Go fishing or something if you want to clamor on about bait.

The difference is that Sam Verner is a Shaman. Not a tech support wage slave. Being a corporate wage slave is where he started in the novels because telling a story involves character development. A protagonist has to grow and learn, otherwise he, and the story, are uninteresting.

Sam Verner the created player character skips to the part where he's a Dog Shaman, and the opening of the novel where he's just a wage slave with unrealized powers is a half written background story the player has scribbled down somewhere. If the novel just started where the PC would start, it loses all the build-up that's important for the character to develop. That's basic fiction writing.

The point is, the Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy storyline would consist of the PC fixing computers and making fun of the people who didn't know how to do it. Not about his sister getting kidnapped, or him finding out he had magical powers, or anything else. And yet, I could very easily create a character with no skills relevant to doing anything other than driving his electric econobox to work and maybe having a hobby or two. That character would be valid under the rules, and I could write up Sixth World scenarios for him to encounter like angry bosses, or misfiled reports. Still wouldn't be a shadowrunner. Now do you understand?

I'm suddenly reminded of that line from Ripley about what happened while she was away when she's addressing the company inquiry at the beginning of Aliens. You quoted me saying I never said there were no appropriate game types for Rockers and then you ask me to prove the opposite. Are you for real? Now I'm reminded of Billy Bob Thornton's line from Bad Santa when the little fat kid asks him if he was dropped on his own head.