At sunrise and sunset, a man casts a long shadow, Rebirth, parabolic change, apocalypse Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Talia Invierno]

I'll suggest, here, that the continuing vitality of a roleplaying game with an invented or adapted world and/or metaplot ties directly to the perception of world change (sometimes echoed within personal or group storylines). Such change absolutely requires playing near perceived beginnings or endings of a cycle or single rise/fall, never in the periods of general status quo or where change is so gradual as to be almost unnoticeable.

The Shadowrun universe manages to fit this requirement both of new possibilities (sudden positive change) and of dystopic decay (sudden negative change) -- simultaneously. We find the Sixth World and the (re)Awakening and in fact exponential rise of magic as an active event-awareness within the lifetimes of many, juxtaposed with and contrasted against a corporate world which seems determined at times to drive toward an inevitable death of the world and the spirit. Machinery erodes the traditional limitations of humankind, in apparently infinite change toward newer, better, more powerful -- but the newly discovered rigid parameters of Essence create a new sense of spirit, with cyberzombies embodying the corporate apocalypse. The Matrix simultaneously eradicates the physical within a new world, a new Creation by humankind which appears to be for all intents and purposes infinite: and yet the simulation cannot but ground within the body/mind balance, and ending existence in either physical or Matrix world ends both.

Interestingly, in Shadowrun as increasingly within our own world, a construct formed entirely upon faith seems to foundation all else: money. But offer an otaku or an Awakened type or even a street samurai a choice between personal riches and the pursuit of their own path in life, and which are they most likely to choose? Ultimately, the nuyen is only an illusion: representational of one's own goals, wishes, desires -- but not usually in itself the agent of personal change, growth, evolution. The reality is karma, the measure of personal discovery.

Nature itself reverberates the conflicting drives, one toward restored and thriving and sometimes overthriving life (redwoods, Amazonia), the other toward destruction and toxicity -- and each of the extremes defining such drastic rates of change occurring well within human memory, and having effects that last well beyond a single lifetime. Maybe that's why there had to be so many reactor accidents: not for the sense of realism per se, but to echo that uneasy feeling that whatever it is that's been unleashed here, for positive or for negative, it's (almost) out of control. There's a sense of a continual edge-of-control or even out-of-control, on both sides.

And finally, I suggest that the motif of drastic change within storytelling is effective only against constants appropriate in degree to the degree of change evoked, in this case the perspective of ancient creatures who have seen at least one rise and fall of the cycle of magic: and that the inherent, disturbing conflict of whether this world is actually rising or falling is further amplified by there being no single agreed-upon view by those ancient creatures. Thus, I propose that the existence of ancient, effectively immortal beings within Shadowrun is absolutely crucial to evoking the mythic imagination, and consequently the potentially mythic scale of one's own actions.

Without this constant sense of drastic change, of being either at the beginning of the world or of witnessing its death throes (or, from the pov of Phoenix, maybe both!) and of potentially being a crucial agent therein; if it had been only a game of runs against corporations etc. in a relatively stable social/psychological/spiritual environment: I doubt Shadowrun would have succeeded to the degree it has.

[Purple Library G...]

My friend the question man pointed me to this, because it's something I've thought about some.
I think that generally, times of more change than usual, whether creative, destructive, or both are more interesting to set roleplaying in. But there's a reason behind that, which doesn't necessarily depend on change per se.

For good adventuring, there needs to be a certain amount of room to maneuver. There has to be some possibility that one might break the rules, crash the big boys' parties, and get away with it. The social fabric cannot be too tight. You can make exceptions to this by having entire groups of effective spies or social engineers--but even there, what you're doing is creating a situation where the social fabric isn't that tight and constraining *for them*, even though they would be to normal people or even most adventuring character types.
So for instance, I have long been interested in the Italian Renaissance as an adventuring setting. The Italian Renaissance wasn't really changing that fast, although over a couple of centuries things did change quite a bit. And the change isn't what makes it adventurable. What the Italian Renaissance had was a whole bunch of little squabbling city-states. They made unstable alliances, fought on land and sea, betrayed one another, and used up enough energy doing it all that their holds on the countryside were often less than firm. Even if that's a fairly stable situation over a long time, there's lots of room to maneuver--do something that makes the doge of Venice hate your guts, and you can go to Florence. Or turn pirate. Or become a bandit in the hills. Or . . . Whether you're interested in theft, intrigue, social climbing, military shenanigans, piracy, peasant revolts or whatnot, there is something for you. Another milieu I've thought had great adventuring promise would be a sort of black-powder-era Philippines-style archipelago, with maybe some magic added in. You'd get the same kind of wide-open piracy and politics, plus martial arts, lost tribes, and secret societies.

The Shadowrun setting is also quite a bit like this. Authority is splintered and reaches some areas fitfully if at all. There are lots of factions. Class mobility can occur through the muzzle of a gun, the blink of a pixel, the nimbus of sorcery or above all the transfer of nuyen. There're attempts at being authoritarian, but there are lots of cracks--heck, gaping chasms--to slip through.

In a more monolithic society, you try something, and if the game master's being halfway faithful to plausibility and the nature of the milieu, the next segment of the campaign is about your desperate quest to stay one step ahead of the law and come up with some fresh identities. Of course, it can be good to have some constraints--enough to make some degree of finesse important. If absolutely anything goes, you lose some scope for skill, and it's also harder for any given action to matter much. But if the system's untouchable and will adapt to anything you do, actions don't matter then either. For the best gaming on average I'd say you want enough structure that there's something to change or build on or get to the top of, but still pretty open, with a lot of scope for individual action. And one of the most common and plausible reasons for things to be like that is some degree of breakdown in social controls caused by sizable changes.